Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (20 page)

By now these joint tours were anything but joint. The Prince and Princess effectively ran their own shows, Diana acting the
chief executive and publicity director of her own roadshow: her own ‘tour within a tour’. As luck would have it, however, Mother Teresa was not in Calcutta. She was reported to be seriously ill and having been taken for treatment at a hospital in Rome. Thus, to Diana, the perfect photo opportunity featuring the inspirational Albanian nun and the ‘princess of hearts’ could not happen after all. Not that it stopped others from saying that it did. So I can categorically state that Diana did not, as Patrick Jephson wrongly wrote in his memoirs,
Shadows of a Princess
, share several photo opportunities in Calcutta with Mother Teresa, as much as she would like to have done so.

I was not feeling on top form in Calcutta. I had a bad fever, having been struck down with a dose of malaria after a security review at the most appalling place I have ever visited in all my life, the mortuary attached to the hospice run by Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity. Indeed, the hospice itself was effectively a mortuary. The wretched souls in there barely had a living cell in their emaciated bodies, while some of the assistants, many of whom had travelled from the West, were themselves infected with AIDS.

It may seem strange, then, to say that the actual royal visit to the hospice was a success, but it was. One desperately sick man, whom doctors said had just hours to live, had amazed everyone by staying alive for twenty-four hours after he was told that the Princess was coming. In her spotless pink dress, surrounded by the grime, dust and despair, she crouched beside the dying man and clasped his hand. It was an almost biblical scene, and the hordes of pressmen were quick to snap pictures when she knelt and prayed for him. The blackboard above the door that led to
the mortuary read that fifteen of the hospice’s patients had died that day.

Within half an hour of her departure, that figure had risen to sixteen as the poor man’s wasted body was carried in to join the rest. The sisters had asked me on earlier, as they showed me into the mortuary, if the Princess would want to see it too. It was a depressing place, sad beyond words and with an atmosphere that seeped into every pore of one’s body. I declined. Even Diana, I thought, would not want to go this far.

The tour of India plumbed new depths of despair for the Princess. For her there would be no turning back and a formal separation was now inevitable.

The strain of hiding the real story – the truth behind the relationship between the Prince and Princess of Wales – was taking its toll not only on the principals, but also on the staff of both households. After India, I personally vowed to try to sidestep these joint ventures. Frankly, the tension these trips caused was too much for anyone to cope with. It stressed Diana to such an extent that she became hell-bent on destroying everything to do with the tour that had been so carefully worked out and organised by advisers after months of planning. Like the little girl in the poem, ‘When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.’ Yet on her own Diana was a different person, and her solo events were essentially pleasurable experiences. Holidays with her sons, too, which on the whole I was left to handle, were great fun, not least because they were often set in idyllic locations. With the Prince off the scene, Diana and her team
of trusted members of her inner circle could relax. Since her death, and even before it, a lot of nonsense has been written about her mood swings. True, she could be petulant and, at the very least, changeable, but she could be damn good fun too, and had a graceful gift of knowing how to make people feel very special.

We returned from the Indian sub-continent. From this moment nothing would ever be the same in the royal world again. Accepting the inevitable, the Prince’s team of advisers, which seemed to be growing by the second, began to take the first steps in preparation for a legal separation. The leading lawyer and government adviser Lord Goodman had been suggested to the Princess as a man who could be trusted when taking soundings of such an explosive subject.

Diana, from now on, had only one thing on her mind – escape. Before that process could be put in hand, however, relations with her husband were to deteriorate further.

VETERAN ROYAL WATCHER James Whitaker made his way towards me across the hard-packed snow. At the moment, he looked as though he was about to explode, his complexion matching the bright red ski suit that he always wore. Here was a man on a mission.

‘How’s the skiing, James – having fun?’ I asked, in a bid to head him off at the pass.

‘Well, as you’ve asked, Ken,’ he replied, ‘it’s not all that good. I had to contend with solid ice in the morning, followed by slush after lunch. It was like skiing in a large vat of porridge.’ Then, before I could even begin to feign sympathy for the lot of the royal reporter, he dropped his bombshell.

‘Ken, I have some bloody serious news and I want you to be dead straight with me,’ he said. His expression had become so austere that it was almost comical.

‘Well, James, what on earth is it?’ I said, trying not to be outdone in seriousness and sincerity. From my many dealings over the years with the Fleet Street legend, I knew that to him everything was always ‘bloody serious’.

‘It’s the Princess’s father, Ken. Earl Spencer. I have it on bloody good authority that he died last night.’ Then he added, ‘You see my predicament, don’t you, Ken? I need this confirmed before I go to press.’ If it were true, this was indeed ‘bloody serious’. Worse, James would insist on confirmation, and would make a considerable nuisance of himself until he got it. I paused for a moment, trying to maintain my composure, before offering what I hoped was a suitably evasive response.

‘Well, if that really is the case, James, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. And I’m quite sure I would have been told,’ I replied, trying to hide the feeling of panic creeping over me. I knew that if James’s source was right, then all hell was going to break loose. By now feeling thoroughly anxious, I cut short our conversation, telling James that I would find out it he was right and assuring him that I would get back to him as soon as possible.

With that I returned to the hotel, where I telephoned the Princess’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, in England. It was not the easiest of questions to ask a daughter and I was dreading the response. If the report was true, however, I knew that we would have to act decisively. There was a great deal at stake, and I did not know how Diana would cope. Sarah, however, assured me that although her father was not in the best of health she had seen him recently and had left him sitting up in his hospital bed; she added that he had been in quite good spirits. Relieved,
I went back to James and assured him that the news of the earl’s death had been grossly exaggerated. As was his wont, he shook his head knowingly and said, ‘That’s amazing, Ken, it came from a bloody good source. Bloody good.’

Yet within a day of our conversation Johnny, eighth Earl Spencer, the Princess’s beloved father and a true gentleman, would be dead. And the ski resort of Lech in the Austrian Alps, where the Prince and Princess of Wales and their sons were on holiday together that March of 1992, would become the setting for one of the most dramatic and difficult episodes in my career with royalty.

Every country that offers good skiing has at least one ultra-smart resort that lures the so-called beautiful people to its manicured slopes, and Lech is one of the most exclusive resorts in Austria. It boasts some excellent intermediate skiing on its pistes and those of neighbouring Zurs, and is perfect for families. Other benefits include short queues, even on the busiest weekends, and a number of exclusive hotels. Quite simply, the Princess had found a haven nestled in the Austrian Alps for her and her sons.

William and Harry had been plaguing their parents to take them skiing for some time. The Prince had promised to arrange it, but nothing ever materialised, although at least once a year he himself still made his annual pilgrimage to the Swiss Alps and his favourite resort, Klosters. The Princess, however, was determined that it would be she and not her husband who answered their sons’ wish. Diana’s close friend Catherine Soames, the former wife of Charles’s long-time crony, the erstwhile Tory minister (and grandson of Sir Winston Churchill),
Nicholas ‘Bunter’ Soames, suggested that Lech would be the perfect place for the Princess and her sons to enjoy their first skiing holiday together. Overcome with excitement, Diana rather impetuously booked the holiday after Catherine showed her a brochure. A few days later she broached the subject with me, knowing that security would be a potential nightmare, given the inevitable press attention her holiday would attract. I told her that I would have to check the resort out as such a visit could have serious security implications. Then I booked a flight and headed for Austria.

Upon my arrival it was soon obvious to me that the location was perfect. The wooden chalets, the mountains dusted with snow and peppered with trees, and the people – protective, discreet and professional – made Lech an ideal royal retreat. It had been a haunt of European and Middle Eastern royal families for many years, but now it was about to be exposed to the ultimate test – Diana, Princess of Wales, the most famous and sought-after woman in the world. I knew it would not take long for the foreign paparazzi to find us. Tracking the Princess was like a military exercise to them, and a lucrative one at that; they were also extremely good at it. The British press was pretty quick to react, too, but from my perspective they were always easier to handle. The British newspaper reporters and photographers would always negotiate. For them, there was too much to lose if they overstepped the mark. But there were always a few photographers and journalists from the foreign press who simply did not care. You could make a deal with them and they would swear until they were blue in the face that they would honour it, but both you and
they knew perfectly well that they never had any intention of doing so.

Diana had made it clear to her husband after the avalanche in Klosters that claimed the life of their friend Hugh Lindsay in 1988 that she would never return to his favoured resort in Switzerland. The Prince, being a creature of habit, made it equally clear that he would do exactly what he wanted, and that if she did not care to join him in Klosters, that was her prerogative. None the less, her decision clearly annoyed him because, being a keen and proficient skier, he wanted to teach his sons to ski in the place where he had learned and had had so much fun over the years. But the Princess was in no mood to co-operate. Although she was a competent skier she was not in Charles’s league, and so when she told him of her plans to take the two young princes to Lech it annoyed him that she was taking charge of training his sons in one of his favourite sports. For her part, Diana basked in his irritation. The fact that he wanted to see Princes William and Harry ski meant, figuratively speaking, that the mountain would have to come to Mohammed. In March 1992, Prince Charles agreed to make the effort and travel to Lech from Klosters to join his family. The Princess would have preferred him to stay away but, acutely aware that her sons would love to show off their new skills to their father, she agreed.

Until the point when the Prince arrived in Lech everything had been going so well. Every morning at around nine o’clock the Princess, in company with her friends Katie Menzies and Catherine Soames, would go to breakfast in the main restaurant of their exquisite five-star hotel, the Arlberg. The owners, the
Schneider family, treated their royal guests perfectly, with complete discretion and just the right degree of deference. After a light breakfast the party would gather in the ski room in the hotel’s basement and prepare to face the press. The previous evening I had met the ringleaders of the eighty or so reporters, camera crews and photographers who had descended on the resort for the royal holiday. Without a press officer on hand I arranged a photo call of sorts at the foot of the main ski-lift. From long experience we knew that the more experienced skiers among the media pack would give chase whatever we did, but I had to try to organise something to avoid the situation getting out of control. In reality I was fighting a losing battle. Some of the foreign photographers were so accomplished they could ski backwards down the piste in front of the Princess with their lenses trained on the royal party.

Sometimes though, the press would back off and Diana would then disappear for the morning with her two girlfriends, a guide, an Austrian policeman and a trained skier from Scotland Yard, before rejoining her sons for lunch in the mountains. As head of security for the trip I would remain at the hotel within radio contact. Occasionally I would join the Princess at one of her favoured haunts on the Mohnenfluh near Oberlech, a refuge about 200 metres above the village, where the skiers would devour Austrian fare and the odd
glühwein
. Diana would ski for another hour or so after lunch, but by mid-afternoon the warm spring weather made conditions slushy and difficult, so she would return to the hotel for a sauna and a swim before getting ready for supper.

The serenity was shattered by the announcement that Prince
Charles and his entourage would be arriving the following night, although what happened next proved in the end to be the comic relief before the storm. The Prince had arrived late after snowdrifts blocked the Arlberg Pass, the only route into the village. Diana had made it clear that her husband would not be welcome in her private suite, and his personal arrangements had to be made through Hannes Schneider if he wanted rooms in the Arlberg for him and his entourage and I arranged his accommodation after consultation with his protection officer.

Members of the royal family expect everything to be perfect, down to the tiniest detail. So when the Prince arrived late that night, he immediately asked for his favourite drink, a stiff dry Martini. But when he went to his room he noticed there wasn’t a refrigerator. At once he called in his policeman, Inspector Tony Parker, and pointed out that despite it being the dead of night he needed a refrigerator. And he needed it
now
. Enter Herr No Problem, Hannes, the son and heir of ‘old man Schneider’, as the Arlberg’s owner was universally known.

‘No refrigerator, no problem,’ he replied in his slightly high-pitched, heavily accented English – even though there was not a spare one in the entire hotel. Twenty minutes later I saw, through a window, Hannes strolling purposefully through the snow with a mini-refrigerator on his back. I have no idea where he had got it, but to the Schneiders when a prince wants a refrigerator, no matter how inconvenient, a refrigerator he gets.

The rest of the stay in Lech was not so entertaining; indeed, it turned out to be an ordeal. Once more fate intervened, and as it turned out, the Prince never skied in Lech that year,
or ever since. For on 29 March 1992 James Whitaker’s grim prophecy was realised. The Princess’s father, Lord Spencer, died at the Brompton Hospital in South Kensington, after years of ill health.

Before her husband’s arrival the Princess had been completely relaxed, as well as determined to have fun. I had even arranged for another guest at the hotel, the British pop singer Sir Cliff Richard, to give a private concert for her. Cliff, an evergreen legend who has had Number One hits in Britain in each of the last five decades, knew Diana was in the hotel and thought it would be fun to perform for her. As a result, his friend, disc jockey Mike Read, approached me and asked if I could arrange it. I told the Princess, who agreed that it would be a great idea. In the event, the concert up in her suite never happened, for the news came through that her father had died. It was a time that was to test those around Diana and the Prince to the very limit, quite apart from the strain it placed upon her and her sons. For me, the tightrope that advisers have to walk between a royal couple’s public and private lives has rarely been so slippery as when the Princess learned of her father’s death.

On the afternoon of the 29th I received a telephone call from Diana’s sister, Sarah. She was understandably distraught. Just twenty-four hours earlier she and I had laughed off reports of her father’s death. Now it had become a sad reality. By this time the Prince was fully installed at the Arlberg with his entourage, consisting of his Private Secretary, Commander Richard Aylard, and his part-time Press Secretary, Philip Mackie, dubbed the ‘Silly Ghillie’ by the media. Armed with the news, I immediately went to Aylard so that he could formally tell the
Prince and ask if him if he wanted to break the news to his wife. I assumed that on being told that Prince Charles himself would tell the Princess, but to my surprise I was asked to see him.

It was decided by all present that as I knew Diana best, the news would be better coming from me. I felt that it should be her husband who told her. I reasoned that the situation was difficult enough without me adding to its complications. Even so, I could not help thinking that these circumstances were in contrast to the touching moment in Kenya when Charles’s father, Prince Philip – a man so often accused of insensitivity – broke the news to the then Princess Elizabeth that her father, King George VI, had died. The two of them had wandered through the grounds as the young Queen contemplated the enormity of her loss, and how it was going to change her life for ever. As Charles’s aides were very anxious about the Princess’s reaction, I thought that the only thing to do was to be exactly what I was – a policeman. If I could not take control in a moment of personal crisis, then who on earth could? Charles knew that his wife would be inconsolable over her father’s death, and he was equally aware that he would bear the brunt of her grief and frustration. Eventually, it was agreed that I would break the news to the Princess.

As I made my way to Diana’s suite I could not help reflecting that this was something I really did not want to do. True, the breaking of tragic news is part of a police officer’s duty, but in most cases the officer involved does not know the people he has to tell. Diana was my principal, but I had also grown to respect and admire her. This was going to be one of the worst duties I could undertake for her.

As gently as I could, I broke the news to the Princess. She was calm at first. She had not expected it, nobody ever does, however much they may have readied themselves for bad news. But before long her eyes filled and tears began to stream down her face.