Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (21 page)

‘Oh my God, Ken … oh my God. What am I to do?’ she sobbed, over and over again. My heart went out to her. I sat beside her on the end of her bed, feeling helpless. Then I put my arms around her, trying in vain to comfort her in her terrible distress. At that moment, with all her defences down, she looked like a lost little girl who has suddenly been made to realise that she is alone in the world.

After a while I tentatively broached the subject of what we had to do next. As delicately as I could, I introduced the subject of the Prince. In an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife, she proceeded to make it abundantly clear that she wanted to return to her dead father and her family as soon as possible, and most definitely alone. Under no circumstances, she said, did she want the Prince to accompany her.

‘I mean it, Ken. I don’t want him with me. He doesn’t love me – he loves that woman. Why should I help save his face. Why the bloody hell should I? It’s my father who has gone. It’s a bit bloody late for Charles to start playing the caring husband, don’t you think?’ she said, every passionate word coming straight from the heart. Foreseeing trouble, I returned to the Prince and his staff, leaving my number two, Sergeant Dave Sharp, with Diana.

By this stage in their relationship there was absolutely no dialogue between the Prince and Princess. I was therefore not
so much a conduit, as the last resort. To make matters worse, Diana bluntly refused to speak to Richard Aylard because he was the Prince’s right-hand man, and, as far as she was concerned, public enemy number one, the chief supporter in Charles’s camp. Nevertheless, I passed on the bad news to Aylard. The blood seemed to drain from his already pale face as he instantly anticipated the Prince’s reaction. Seconds later Charles emerged from his suite, still clearly in shock. He was, of course, concerned for his wife, himself and his children.

In this extremely unhappy situation I decided to take control.

‘I am going to put my police officer’s hat on, sir. This is a very difficult and delicate situation. How do you think we should handle it?’ But the Prince seemed by now to have come to a decision. I was left in no doubt that the task of getting the Princess back to Britain in a reasonable state and in company with her husband would be my responsibility.

Again I was asked to reason with her, on the grounds that I knew the Princess so well. There was little I could do about it, and I therefore promised to return to the Princess’s suite, adding that I would do my best. As I left, I turned and told the Prince that I could make no guarantees. He, meanwhile, telephoned the Queen, who was at Windsor Castle, to break the news that the earl, a former equerry both to her and to her late father, King George VI, had died.

I was extremely apprehensive as I made my way back to Diana’s suite, fully aware that there was a lot riding on this next conversation. If she decided to throw a hysterical fit and refuse her husband’s request – and she was quite capable of doing so – we would be back to square one; moreover the press
who would soon begin to mass outside the hotel would have a field day. Lord Spencer’s death was a major news story, and if the Prince and Princess did not return to Britain together then nothing, not even compassion for the grief-stricken Diana, would stop the journalists from going for the jugular. The truth about the Waleses would be immediately and blindingly obvious to the most naive journalist. I made my decision in the light of all this. Returning to the Princess’s room, I told her bluntly that this was not a matter for debate.

‘Ma’am, you have to go back with the Prince. This one is not open for discussion. You just have to go with it.’ At once her tears began to flow again. I tried to comfort her. We talked about how I had lost my father, Frank, and that I, like her, had not managed to get back in time to speak to him. Death, I assured her, was part of life. And as she continued to weep I told her that we all have to go on for our families’ sake, as well as our own.

‘Ma’am, your father would not have wanted this. He was a loyal man; he would not have wanted his death turned into a media circus, would he?’

I don’t know what it was that struck a chord, but something did. Her mood changed. She became calmer, and began to listen to reason. ‘Okay Ken, I’ll do it. Tell him I’ll do it, but it is for my father, not for him – it is out of loyalty to my father.’ Perhaps it was the word ‘loyalty’ that had made the difference, but whatever it was, the Princess was back on level ground. I had done the Prince’s bidding, and on the face of it, at least, a potentially damaging situation had been averted. Diplomacy, common sense and Diana’s own sense of pride had won the day.

Back I went to the Prince’s quarters, where I told Richard Aylard that she had relented and agreed to travel back with the Prince. There was a palpable sense of relief all round. It was only then that Aylard and the ‘Silly Ghillie’ headed off to the Monzabon Hotel, opposite the Arlberg, where they had asked the media to assemble for the daily briefing.

While I sat at the foot of the Princess’s bed, trying to comfort her, Aylard and Mackie broke the news to the press. It was around 7 pm local time, which meant that it was 6 pm in London, and nobody there knew that the Princess’s father had died earlier that evening. At the Monzabon the press had all turned up to hear what the royal party had been doing that day and to make sure that none of them had been injured. So when Aylard told the gathered media the news, it was greeted with a respectful silence until the veteran
Sun
photographer Arthur Edwards asked the crucial question: ‘Richard, has this gone out on the Press Association wires?’

Aylard and Mackie looked blankly at each other for a second, then replied in unison, ‘No!’

All hell broke loose. There was a mass exodus, as if war had been declared or the three-minute warning for a nuclear strike had been sounded. Journalists, photographers, camera crews and anchormen were literally climbing over one another as they raced for the phones so they could tell their respective editors before the first editions went to bed, or the next news bulletins went out. Some of the journalists, perhaps understandably, did not really trouble themselves too much about the other guests as they shouted their stories down the telephone for the next hour or so.

The Princess refused to talk to anyone, and gave me strict instructions that nobody else, particularly her husband or members of his party, would be welcome in her suite. Charles, however, appeared unmoved by his wife’s directive. Instead, he went outside to play snowballs with his two sons, where he gently broke the news to them that their grandfather was dead. Despite their sadness, the boys took it well. This was their first real experience of death, and the Prince, a sensitive and caring father, did his best to console them. There was nothing he could do to help the grief-stricken Princess.

For the next three hours I sat on the end of Diana’s bed as her emotions raged. One minute she was lucid, in touch with reality, accepting of the situation. At other times she was angry at the world, shouting and screaming as the tears streamed down her face. She wanted to fly back immediately but given how late it was, a Royal Flight could not be arranged until the following morning. I could do nothing but try to calm her, telling her that it was only sensible to wait for morning. ‘It makes sense, ma’am,’ I kept saying. ‘Trust me on this one, it is the right thing to do.’

The Prince of Wales is undeniably a good man, and I speak as someone who has known him at close quarters. His is a sensitive, caring, even spiritual character. Furthermore, his treatment of his wife during their marriage was in some ways understandable. As much as I liked and admired her, she could be an extremely difficult woman, and it is axiomatic – indeed, almost a cliché – that when relationships or marriages crumble there are always two sides to every story.

We left Lech by car for Zurich airport the following
morning. It was a gloriously crisp day, with a beautiful clear blue sky and wonderful powder snow sprinkled on the slopes like a thick covering of icing sugar over a cake. The Prince, always a passionate skier, had never been to Lech before, and as it turned out would not return. Tony Parker, the Prince’s personal protection officer on this trip, was driving, with me sitting in the passenger seat alongside him. Charles sat in the back seat, next to his wife.

The tension in the car was electric. I looked in the mirror in time to see the Princess’s eyes rise heavenwards in a gesture of the purest exasperation at comments made by the Prince. There was an icy silence for the rest of the two-hour journey.

At the airport we boarded the BAe 146 of the Queen’s Flight that was waiting for us, while the media, who were out in force, scribbled notes and the photographers’ flashguns fired. Nothing was said during the entire flight. The Princess did not want to speak to her husband and he, fearing a furious or even hysterical outburst, did not dare even to try to start a conversation.

Whatever the discomforts of the journey, however, it was soon clear that the PR spin had worked. The next day it was reported that Prince Charles was at Diana’s side in her hour of need. Yet as soon as the Prince and Princess arrived at Kensington Palace they went their separate ways – he to Highgrove, and she to pay her last respects to her father.

I accompanied the Princess and her sisters when they went to see their father’s body at the chapel of rest at Kenyon’s, the funeral directors in Notting Hill, London. When we arrived Diana, who by now had become much calmer, asked me if I too
wanted to pay my respects to the late earl. I demurred, saying that I thought that this was a supremely private moment, and one that belonged to the Spencer family, and to them alone. Diana smiled, then turned and joined Lady Sarah and Lady Jane inside the funeral directors’ premises. I had met Lord Spencer on a number of occasions. He was an extremely courteous man, very much an English aristocrat of the old school. Despite claims in the media of rifts between them, he always enjoyed a very close relationship with his younger daughter, Diana. As a father he was very attentive, and was always conscious of the needs of his children. It was perhaps inevitable that there would be conflicts with his children over his second wife, Raine, Countess Spencer, but he never let these differences come between him and Diana.

Sadly, the same could not be said of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. On the day of the earl’s funeral, two days later, the atmosphere between the royal couple had deteriorated yet further. Diana resembled nothing so much as a volcano that might erupt at any second. If she did, I thought, we would never get her back – the full force of her fury, grief and frustration would break upon everyone around her, and no one would be able to control the effects. Certainly everyone, including the Queen, was very concerned about how the Princess would cope during the funeral. They knew she was highly strung, and were fearful of the repercussions.

In the morning I drove the Princess to Althorp, the Spencer’s family home in Northamptonshire, for the funeral. The Prince also attended, against his wife’s wishes, arriving by helicopter. It was an intensely sad day for her, and Diana and I did not
speak much on the journey, but when she did talk she kept returning to the same theme. ‘He’s going to turn my father’s funeral into a charade, Ken,’ she complained. ‘It’s so false.’

‘Well, ma’am, just don’t let him,’ I responded. My heart went out to her, and I felt helpless that I could do so little to ease her grief.

The Spencer family as a whole also did not want the Prince to attend, but in the event Diana’s brother, Charles, the new Earl Spencer, persuaded her to relent. The press, however, noted that the Prince was not there to comfort her on the long journey to Althorp. Although her husband was at the funeral in person, it was clear from the Princess’s body language that she was alone.

Lord Spencer was cremated after a quiet, private family service. Afterwards the Princess was handed the urn containing the late earl’s ashes and we returned to the Spencer family vault inside the church at Great Brington, just outside the estate walls. All the late earl’s children were there, family feuds at last forgotten as they made their final farewells to their father. Then a great stone was lifted and I joined the Princess in the vault, surrounded by the remains of her ancestors, with a candle as our only light. There were cobwebs all around us, and the air was pervaded by a pungent dusty smell. With tears in her eyes, Diana said a prayer; then she too said her final farewell to her father.

It is hard to believe that, just over five years later, she herself would make her last journey to Althorp in her coffin, mourned by millions.

DIANA WENT FOR A SWIM IN THE POOL at the British Ambassador’s official residence in Cairo, where she was staying. Swimming helped her clear her head, and in May 1992 she had a lot on her mind. Climbing out of the pool, she wrapped a towel around her shoulders and said, ‘Ken, if anything happens to me you’ll let people know what I was really like, won’t you?’

‘Are you sure, ma’am?’ I replied lightly. ‘You’ll be taking a hell of a risk.’ She playfully pushed me on the shoulder as if to reprimand me for my cheek, but some serious matter was clearly preying on her mind. She dived back into the pool and started an energetic workout but, after only a few minutes’ crawl and backstroke and no more than ten lengths, I spotted a glint of reflected light from the building opposite. Camera lens, I thought. I told the Princess and she climbed from the pool, wrapped a towel over her one-piece swimsuit and went
back inside. I followed her, and found that from the residence we could see men on the roof of the building where I had seen the flash.

As they continued to take picture after picture, even though there was now nothing of interest to photograph, Diana spoke of her feeling of total isolation. ‘Ken,’ she said calmly, ‘I want out of this once and for all.’ I could not help but agree with her, at least where this intrusion into her privacy was concerned.

I was angry, however. I had identified the building as a possible problem during the reconnaissance that had preceded this trip, but officials from the British Embassy had said that there was little they could do about it because some Egyptian in-house security staff were easily bribed. And that is exactly what had happened. I walked across and entered the building, playing the policeman to the limit. When I got to the roof some of the photographers were still there with their cameras trained on the pool. An ITN cameraman, a freelance named Mike Lloyd, was also there, although he was just preparing to leave. When I confronted them all they admitted that they had bribed the guard to let them on to the roof.

Although hardly welcome, such long-lens photography was to be expected on private holidays, but most of these photographers had official accreditation passes from the Palace to cover the royal tour – an
official
tour, during which they would attend scores of photo sessions – and I told them that their behaviour was a blatant intrusion into the Princess’s privacy. They agreed to leave immediately, although whether swayed by my anger, or by their fear of losing their accreditation, I do not know.

Next morning, inevitably, the pictures appeared in most of the British newspapers, and ITN even ran the intrusive footage on the news. Diana, determined that her trip should not be trivialised, was concerned in case the pictures shown on British TV should offend Muslim sensitivities, given that they showed her in a swimsuit, and feared that they might create a false impression of her attitude to her official tour, following so closely on the row over the Duchess of York’s island-hopping holiday in the Far East. Diana’s press aide, Dickie Arbiter, sprang into action, issuing briefings and threatening action against those who had snatched the pictures. He told one newspaper, ‘If the first thing people see of her in Egypt is her swimming around in a pool, it puts her in a frivolous light.’ The principal result was that he insisted on Draconian punishment for the offending journalists and photographers, against the Princess’s wishes, banning them from the upcoming visit to Korea, which turned out to be the last joint tour undertaken by Charles and Diana.

In reality Diana had far bigger concerns than some video footage and a few grainy, long-lens snapshots of her lapping a swimming pool. Andrew Morton’s book, in which she had secretly collaborated, was about to be launched upon a largely unsuspecting world, and she was well aware that the mother of all rows would follow.

Diana knew the show had to go on nevertheless, and she was determined not to disappoint her hostess, the wife of Egypt’s President Mubarak. To that end, she set about her official duties, which included a visit to a home for blind
children that moved her terribly, with a good grace and astonishing energy.

Not for the first time, Fleet Street totally missed the real story and traduced the Princess, printing the swimming-pool shots rather than following her as she set about a full programme of engagements. Not only that, but they had missed another opportunity to expose the truth. The fact that while she was promoting British industry and her own brand of caring abroad, her husband was on holiday in Turkey with another man’s wife, was undoubtedly more in the public interest than a few cheap shots of Diana in a swimsuit. Worse, before arriving in Egypt, Diana’s flight had first landed in Turkey, where Prince Charles left the aircraft to join a party of friends including Camilla Parker Bowles.

Diverting to Turkey to deliver her husband into his lover’s arms had not only added considerable time to the Princess’s journey, but had also increased the stress she was already under. Understandably, she broke down in tears as, very late at night, we approached Cairo. Somehow, though, she pulled herself together just when she needed to, vowing not to let her ‘A’ Team’ down. Diana knew perfectly well the reason for her husband’s trip to Turkey, but she was determined not to crack up while she was on official duty. For that she deserves enormous credit.

Although she handled the formal side of her duties with her usual charm and aplomb, Diana was in a very emotional state and had to be handled with care. With hindsight, her tears may have had more to do with the impending publication of Andrew Morton’s book than with her frustration at
her husband’s blatant infidelity. Yet for her, the Egypt trip delivered all that it had promised: yet another solo triumph for the Princess. In terms of press coverage, the visit was also a true Diana media spectacular, which saw her agreeing to pose for photographs by the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the breathtaking temple at Luxor, to the delight of the hordes of pressmen. Unfortunately, the words that accompanied the stunning photographs when they appeared in the papers were beyond her or her assistants’ control.

With the greatest secrecy, Diana had sealed her own fate and defined her future; but I am convinced that she would not have gone ahead with the deal with Andrew Morton and his publisher, Michael O’Mara, had she not truly believed that she could get away with it. In that she was right; it was only after her death that Morton revealed that she had not only secretly collaborated in the writing of
Diana: Her True Story
, but that it was she who had approached him in the first place. Many people had their suspicions about her part in the project, but she and the very few other people involved maintained their silence until the end. I was kept completely in the dark about the entire project – probably for my own good, for Diana knew if that if I had found out about it I would have been compromised. Her decision to strike a deal with the independent journalist, writer and former royal correspondent Andrew Morton through her close friend, Doctor James Colthurst, was one that she took entirely herself. She wanted to be free of her marriage and of the stifling embrace of the Palace, and she had come to believe that if Morton could write her version of events, for all the world to read, then it would prove so damning of Prince Charles and
his family that they would have no choice but to grant her, in effect, an exit visa.

It was strategy typical of Diana, naive, perhaps even childish, but almost brutally direct. Morton’s account proved to be a brilliant and historic document – and perhaps the longest divorce petition on record. More importantly for Diana, it achieved what it set out to do – rocking the monarchy to its foundations and freeing her from its shackles. For the first time, too, the anonymous friends so often cited in newspaper stories were named and quoted on the record in the book. What infuriated the Palace and the royal family was that it was clear that, despite her protestations, they had at the very least spoken to Morton with Diana’s consent and encouragement.

Diana: Her True Story
broke when the first extract of the serialisation of the book appeared in
The Sunday Times
on 7 June 1992. Then the book itself was published, immediately becoming a major and long-running bestseller. Clearly readers wanted to know about the Princess; thanks to Morton they now knew a good deal more than Prince Charles, the royal family and the Palace had ever wanted them to know. This was not throwing down the gauntlet; this was unhorsing an opponent before he had even reached for his lance. In the weeks that followed the royal family bluntly pointed a damning finger of blame at the Princess, but at no stage did she buckle under pressure. She stuck to her story, denying that she had co-operated with the book or encouraged its author in any way. When questioned about Morton, her answer was invariably the same: ‘I have never spoken to him.’ She was, of course, not lying. She had not given face-to-face interviews
to Morton; indeed, she never met him, but had provided him with tapes of her thoughts and memories recorded in private conversations with her old friend Colthurst at Kensington Palace. The Old Etonian doctor would then deliver the tapes secretly to the author.

When the Princess was questioned by her brother-in-law, Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary, on the question of her collaboration with Morton, she again categorically denied it. This led Sir Robert to tell Her Majesty that he believed Diana was telling the truth, and that the Palace’s sole remaining option, given that it was impossible to prove that the book was a work of self-interest orchestrated by Diana herself, was to go all out and attack the book, questioning Morton’s accuracy and motives, and denigrating his sources. It was too little, too late; the book had (and has) an authority that proved unshakeable. Some of the Prince’s circle tried to intimate that Diana was at best hysterical, and at worst mad, but that too backfired. She was by now too popular, too visible, too beautiful – as well as too important to the media – ever to fall victim to such shabby denigration. When it later transpired that Diana had lied to him, Fellowes offered to fall on his sword, tendering his resignation, which the Queen, who liked and respected him, refused to accept.

I may not have been party to the
Her True Story
gunpowder plot, but I knew that something was afoot once the project got under way early in 1990. I have said that Diana may have wanted to keep me in the dark for my own protection, but on reflection it seems more likely that she knew I would advise against such subversive tactics, knowing that they might very well backfire
spectacularly. Throughout this time, her demeanour was sometimes that of a frightened child who believes she may have got away with some piece of mischief, but fears, too, that she may be caught.

Nor, I honestly believe, did the Princess realise that Morton’s book would explode in the way it did. She had spoken often to me about her feeling of absolute isolation. In her own words, she was deeply unhappy and desperate to escape. I feared the worst. If she tried to escape, how could she continue to see her children? And if she were simply to run away, it would, I was sure, destroy her. All this changed with the publication of
Diana: Her True Story
. The royal family and the ‘men in gray suits’ in the Palace were placed firmly in the gaze of the book’s millions of readers, most of them sympathetic to the Princess. In such a glare, to which the media added voluminously, the Palace’s ability to control Diana or influence her marriage evaporated. Her plan had worked triumphantly.

I was never an avid reader of the
News of the World
, but on this particular Sunday – 14 June – I made an exception. Frenzied speculation about what was in Andrew Morton’s forthcoming book
Diana: Her True Story
had reached fever pitch among the newspapers that had not acquired serialisation, of which the second extract appeared in
The Sunday Times
that day. In reality only a few people, including publisher Michael O’Mara, Morton himself and, as it turned out, Diana knew what was actually in it. Yet that did not stop some journalists from writing what they thought, rather than what they actually knew.

‘Diana Wept Every Time Charles Was Late Home’, read
the headline. That did not worry me; apart from typical exaggeration and spin it was true that there had been occasions when Diana had cried with pent-up frustration when her husband failed to appear. Even if he had a genuine reason for being late, she always thought that it was because he had been with ‘his lady’. No, what concerned me was the sub-heading: ‘She told bodyguard to tap Camilla phone calls.’

The thrust of the article dealt with speculation inspired by the Morton book and in particular its most damning truth – the affair between the Prince and Camilla. The reporter, Clive Goodman, dubbed by the paper its ‘royal man in the know’, wrongly alleged that ‘the book claims Diana turned detective and asked her trusted bodyguard, Ken Wharfe, to check Charles’s telephone records. He allegedly found that the Prince was ringing the Parker Bowles’s London home up to four times a week.’ The article also stated that ‘she’d get her bodyguard to take note of the mileage on the car she thought he’d be using then check it again the next morning.’ The allegations, which I need hardly say do not appear in Morton’s book, were completely untrue. But the report alleged that I colluded in and actually committed a criminal offence (illegal phone tapping), and otherwise engaged in unauthorised activities that were wholly unprofessional and a breach of trust. I had no choice but to sue. The
News of the World
printed an unreserved apology, accepting that there had been no truth in the allegations the paper had made against me.

Everyone in the inner circle knew that divorce was now inevitable. Yet, as the world held its breath for one of the
most dramatic royal episodes in recent times, Diana herself, still in Egypt as speculation about the Morton story ran wild before any of the book had appeared in print, was close to breaking point. At a press reception just after the
Sunday Times
serialisation began, she openly lied (as it turned out later) about her involvement in the book, telling James Whitaker and photographer Kent Gavin – who, like most of the media, had got wind of the impending story – that she had had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I could see the naked disbelief on their faces, but her lie would be enough to stop them ‘off the record’ across their front pages next day, trumpeting how the Princess had opened her heart to the
Mirror
.