Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (11 page)

‘GRAN-GRAN’ WAS THE PET NAME William and Harry used for their great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, while the Queen was always ‘Granny’; but to the police, there was only one ‘Supergran’ – Diana’s mother, the Honourable Mrs Frances Shand Kydd. To Diana she was simply ‘Mummy’, the one person in the world to whom she could always turn. A great deal of nonsense has been written about the allegedly unsympathetic relationship between the two women, much of it based upon the improperly understood notion that Frances ‘bolted’ while Diana was a child, abandoning her four children to run off with another man after her unhappy marriage to Diana’s father had failed. It is certainly true that Frances abandoned the marriage, but what is less often remarked is that she fought hard to keep custody of her two youngest children, Diana and Charles, only to be betrayed in a celebrated – indeed, sensational – court
case by her own mother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, who testified against Frances in favour of her aristocratic son-in-law Johnny, the eighth Earl Spencer. Even after the divorce and custody hearings were over, Frances did everything possible to spend as much time as she could with her impressionable daughter and young son, Charles.

What I witnessed in private told a very different story from the widely held one of mother and daughter at odds with one another, for Diana and ‘Granny Frances’ (the boys’ pet name for her) enjoyed a close and loving relationship. When Diana was at her most troubled, and really needed the most private of counsel, it was to her mother that she would always turn.

Whenever Frances came to Highgrove, or when we went to her home near Oban in the west of Scotland, William and Harry were ecstatic. Diana’s mother was an excellent mediator, and at Highgrove was one of the few people capable of breaking the bitingly cold silences that reigned between Charles and Diana. Journalists tended to assume that because the Princess and her mother lived so far apart geographically, contact between them must be limited. In reality they kept very much in touch, and whenever Diana wanted to escape with her sons, we would decamp
en masse
for Scotland to her mother’s remote hideaway for a healthy dose of normality. The young princes loved these visits, and they were always a tonic to Diana.

At the time Frances lived in a whitewashed farmhouse on the remote island of Seil, a few miles south of Oban. As with any proposed visit by the Princess, private or otherwise, I would be sent in advance to ensure the place was secure. Although such an investigation would be very discreet, it was essential to liaise
with the local police at Oban, who enjoyed a good relationship with Frances, and to ensure there were enough rooms in the nearby Willowburn Hotel at Balricar for back-up protection officers. It is not too much to say that Seil was the setting for one of the best holidays the Princess and her sons ever took together, far outshining the more glamorous and exotic foreign trips she made that the press highlighted.

In August 1989 the three of them spent a week-long holiday with Frances. It could not have come at a better time, for the Princess was close to breaking point. Seil and the surrounding area had everything that two active and adventurous small boys could hope for. With the sea on its doorstep, open countryside, river inlets and rowing boats, it was better than any adventure playground.

Good forward planning meant that we arrived there undetected by the media. It delighted her that here her boys were able to play as normal children away from snoopers, and away from the restraints of royal life. Diana, too, had complete freedom. She was able to go off on long solitary walks without me or the back-up officers. I knew that she was relatively safe on the island, but as a precaution I insisted that she always took with her a police radio tuned to my waveband, in case she encountered difficulties. This was, I think, a measure of the level of trust that had developed between us since I had taken over as her senior personal protection officer. True, I was not acting by the book, and doubtless my superiors would have been horrified, but it worked. The Princess appreciated our working relationship and the freedom it brought her, and for weeks afterwards her feelings of being trapped would seem to evaporate.

One of Diana’s many qualities was that she really was, at heart, a natural girl who liked taking care of others. She took no domestic staff with her when she went to visit her mother. It meant she could really be herself. Perhaps curiously for a woman of immense privilege, she relished the domestic chores which the absence of her sometimes over-attentive staff allowed her. She delighted in doing the dishes after dinner and in washing everybody’s clothes; she even offered to iron my shirts, though I initially declined. Eventually, however, I relented and handed one of them over, joking with her that I could not imagine the Queen ironing one of my colleague’s shirts. The image of Her Majesty standing at an ironing board with one of her shirtless bodyguards before her sent the Princess into fits of giggles. As she stood in the kitchen with just a towel wrapped around her, ironing my shirt, William joined us. He had developed the idea that his mother had a crush on me and, being full of mischief, put this to her. The Princess told him not to be so silly, at which he suddenly tugged at her towel so that it dropped to the floor, leaving the wife of the heir to the throne naked before me. Diana slowly picked up the towel, covered herself again, and promptly burst out laughing.

There was a relaxed family atmosphere to her holidays on Seil that was especially welcome because it was so rare in a life filled with official functions and all the other trappings of royalty. I helped prepare the meals that the family and I would enjoy at Frances’s old table. We would sit there eating, drinking and regaling each other with stories far into the night. Such times were truly golden, and I am glad to have been able to share them. Much of this was owed to Frances, a decent, down-to-earth
woman, humorous, intelligent and kind, who has been, and sometimes still is, much maligned. During the days, as I kept the two princes occupied, the Princess was able to discuss with her mother the full implications of her increasingly desperate situation. Frances was the perfect sounding board. Not only was she a sympathetic ear, but she had a wealth of experience in marital disharmony, having been through one of the most celebrated divorces of the sixties.

She knew of the private relationships of both her daughter and her son-in-law, but still gently urged Diana to fight to save her marriage, knowing that she still loved Charles, if only for the sake of her sons. Frances, more than most people, knew the agony of being separated from her children.

Just over a year later, Frances came to stay at Highgrove for the weekend at the invitation of the Prince who, curiously, for he liked her, timed it so that he was away and Diana had the run of the house. It was wonderful for the princes to have Granny Frances around, and they could barely contain their excitement when she arrived. As always, Frances revived her daughter’s flagging spirits. It was one of those beautiful September weekends when the summer seems to have forgotten that autumn is already here. The weather was perfect for lounging beside the pool, and there the two women, so similar in character and looks, sat and talked for hours. It was not difficult to guess what they were discussing. Both were genuinely sad to be parting when Monday morning came. They promised not to leave it so long before they met again. Then Diana embraced her mother on the steps before waving her off.

I had a great deal of time for Frances Shand Kydd. She did
everything she could to support her daughter, but also to save Diana’s marriage, if only for the sake of William and Harry. Her wisdom, her experience, her kindness, were always at Diana’s disposal, and the Princess knew it, and was glad of it. Sadly, however, by the autumn of 1990 matters had reached a point beyond any person’s repair.

Throughout her life within ‘the Firm’, senior members of the royal family privately disapproved of Diana’s headline-grabbing acts of public caring. In reality, however, they all, Prince Charles included, coveted the positive media attention she attracted. It is undoubtedly true that since her death the royal family has embraced much of the style and many of the ideas she pioneered.

To accuse the Princess of cynically using the sick and dispossessed to bolster her image, as some commentators have done, is as unjust as it is untrue. As I know only too well, there were many occasions when she would have preferred to have stayed at home playing with her sons. That she did not was because she felt a clear sense of her duty, as well as a profound sense of responsibility to the ordinary men and women who often waited for hours to see her. She never willingly let anyone down.

From an early age, Diana wanted to help those less fortunate than herself. She was by nature a giving person, but during the first few years of her marriage, when she was in her early twenties, she lacked the confidence to put her wishes into practice. By the late 1980s, however, she was beginning to realise her power and potential. She was also genuinely interested in how other people coped with their given lot.

The late Cardinal Basil Hume and the Princess were kindred spirits. They forged a close friendship and Diana even flirted for a time with the idea of converting to Catholicism.
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She once asked me what I thought of the idea but, perhaps too glibly, I told her that she would make an interesting subject for the priest who heard her confession. None the less, I am sure that the only reason she did not join the Catholic Church (as her mother had done) was because she was worried about the backlash from the royal family if she had done so. Ironically, the bar on the heir to the throne marrying a Catholic is likely to be one of the reforms that will be introduced before Prince Charles becomes King.

Diana’s first experience of the harsh reality of homelessness came in September 1989 after Cardinal Hume (Archbishop of Westminster, and thus the Roman Catholic Primate of England and Wales) invited her to make a private visit to the Passage Day Centre in Carlisle Place, near Victoria in Central London. The centre, run by the Catholic Church, was located in a large basement, where there were kitchens, tables and, above all, heaters. On the day of the visit I placed two police officers, dressed in shabby clothing, down there to monitor security, since we could hardly adopt a stop-and-search policy for a sympathetic visit. They were already in place when the Princess and I arrived at around 10.30 am on 11 September. Most of those using the centre were sad cases, people simply cast aside or forgotten by society; many were hooked on drugs or alcohol, or tormented by mental illness. Since no member of the royal family had ever done anything like this before, the Princess was naturally apprehensive as she stepped from the car
to be greeted by Cardinal Hume and Sister Barbara Smith, who were waiting on the pavement outside the centre.

That day, Diana had discarded her designer clothes and was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Once inside and with the formalities over, I decided to give her a free hand. For about an hour she chatted easily to these desperate people, discussing the conditions they lived in and the food available to them, and a hundred other things besides. I should stress that, in 1989, I doubt whether any member of the royal family would even have contemplated making such a visit. Prince Charles, to his credit, has since followed Diana’s lead, as have William and Harry (although they made some of these visits with their mother), but the royal family’s involvement with these and similar less glamorous causes would never, in my opinion, have come about but for her example. She was without doubt a pioneer, and a brave one at that. Her life would have been a great deal easier – and a great deal less beset by criticism – if she had simply sat back, dressed extravagantly and looked good at royal engagements, and deferred to her husband. But Diana was different; more importantly, she wanted to have a positive effect on the world around her. What she lacked in formal education she more than made up for with an inquiring mind and a desire to learn from first hand experience and face-to-face meetings.

At the centre, she simply sat down among these unfortunates and talked to them. For obvious reasons, a policeman’s experience of the homeless, of alcoholics and drug addicts, and of the mentally disturbed, is not always a happy one, but as I watched Diana at work my fears lifted. This woman, who
herself came from a privileged background and had married into one of the most famous and richest families in the world, did everything she could to appreciate the situations of those she spoke to and understand what had led them to such despair. Within minutes the sceptical ogling and transfixed stares had disappeared, and for a brief while these down-and-outs seemed to forget who she was. Despite my decision to let her mix freely, I remained close to the Princess just in case of trouble. It was a prudent decision because at one point a florid-faced man, whom I would have guessed to be in his mid-forties, unkempt and wearing filthy clothes, suddenly decided to confront her. Breathing alcohol fumes all over her, he launched into a tirade.

‘It’s all right for the likes of you to come down here just for half an hour. You want to try living on the streets…’

As I prepared to move him away, Diana turned to me, indicating that she did not want me to intervene. As he reeled off his complaints, peppered with expletives throughout, she remained calm and relaxed. ‘It’s okay, Ken,’ she whispered, ‘I’m fine.’

She then looked the red-faced man in the eye and, without flinching, replied:

‘Well, the reason I am here is to see exactly what it is like, so that I can help in any way I can.’

That serene, unflustered and above all, sympathetic response won over those around the man, and he was shouted down. He had made a point that worried the Princess, however. In the car on the way back to Kensington Palace it was clear that his comments still preyed on her mind.

‘Perhaps he’s right, Ken,’ she said, as she mulled over the
criticism. Trying to reassure her, I told her that what she was doing was right. ‘Ma’am, you must be true to yourself. Follow your instincts and you won’t go wrong.’