Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (26 page)

The reprimand infuriated me – after all, keeping the press happy contributed to my charges’ security – but
my colleagues advised me to remain cool. At a time when journalists and photographers are often condemned for their actions (indeed, photographers were to be initially blamed for causing Diana’s death), I can only re-emphasise that every one of those on Nevis stuck to our agreement. Not one broke ranks; they knew that the deal with the Princess was a fair one, and that the pictures they were getting frankly could not have been bettered. There was no sneaking around in bushes, no following her and her sons, no stalking her from a distance, no invasion of the Montpelier. With the exception of a few archaic-thinking members of the royal household, who had an agenda of their own which involved trying to clip Diana’s wings, and a couple of high-ranking officers at Scotland Yard, everyone was happy with the arrangement. These people were swift to criticise the deal with the press, but offered no practical advice, either to the Princess or to me, about how to handle the situation. Instead, they left me to deal with the problem, then complained that it was not my place to do so. Everything that my friend and Charles’s protection officer, Colin Trimming, had once predicted was coming true. Nevertheless, and despite the flak I was getting back home, the deal was working, and I knew that it would continue to do so as long as Diana was on my side. Sadly, however, I knew her well enough by now to realise that it was likely only to be a matter of time before she and I parted. Her behaviour during her association with Hoare, as well as her plans for her life in the wake of the separation, meant that she no longer wanted someone around her who constantly urged caution in her plans and actions. I had, however, always
resolved that when that time came I stood a better chance if I jumped before I was pushed.

After a week in the sun, the Princess, relaxed and refreshed, returned to Britain. It was 6 January 1993, the start of one of the most momentous years of her life, and one that would ultimately lead to us parting. Yet for now our relationship was as good as it had ever been. As she stepped off the aircraft into the pale light of a winter morning, she turned and flashed a smile at me.

‘Thanks, Ken, I really needed that. You saved my life. That was the best holiday I’ve ever had.’

‘It was a pleasure, ma’am, a real pleasure,’ I replied, not without a sense of satisfaction.

But these were dangerous times. The knives were being sharpened for the Princess, with powerful figures in Palace corridors whispering disparaging remarks about her flaunting her body to the press on Nevis. By association, they were out for me, too. When I returned to the office I was instructed that the Commander wanted a full report about what had happened on Nevis, and in particular about why I had adopted the role of the Princess’s press secretary. I complied, although I never heard what happened to the report after I had submitted it.

A few days later I received a package from the
Daily Mirror
’s Kent Gavin containing a full set of the photographs of Diana he had taken on Nevis. Inside was a note, which read: ‘Many thanks for your kind assistance during the trip to Nevis. It was a difficult situation handled in a very professional manner.’ Perhaps I was in the wrong job, but at least somebody other than Diana appreciated my efforts.

DIANA WAS CONVINCED THAT 1993 would be her year, and from the way it began she had every reason to believe this. Refreshed by her Caribbean holiday and no longer shackled by the wreck of a marriage, she was in high spirits. Nor was she in any mood to mope around her Kensington Palace apartment, even though she had removed from it all traces of her husband’s existence. As for the Prince, he appeared to descend into gloom after the public declaration of his marital failure, just days after his wife returned from her holiday to rave press reviews. It seemed that there was just no stopping her.

‘Everything is hunky-dory, Ken,’ the Princess said as we drove through the police barrier at Kensington Palace. She was clutching a draft outline of the programme for her forthcoming official visit to the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal, sent to her by her private secretary, Patrick Jephson.
Clearly excited, she read part of it out loud, as if to convince herself it was true.

‘We await details of Lynda’s [Baroness Chalker, the Minister for Overseas Development, who was also going] own programme, although it is expected that several of the engagements (especially on the first and second days) will be joint.’

She paused for a few moments, as if to check that I was listening.

‘See, Ken? I am getting my way – the government is backing me,’ she said, and there was a genuine excitement in her voice. She had been looking at me intently from the moment I had collected her, but I was distracted, and probably rather distant. I had other matters on my mind. The negative reaction I had received from higher-ranking officers after Nevis still rankled, but more than that, it worried me. I knew that the more the Princess and the Establishment clashed, the more difficult my position would become. Oblivious of my mood, however, Diana continued. When she was on a high, nothing could get her down, and she seemed to think my quietness was due to concern for her.

‘Honestly, you don’t have to worry about me. I know what I’m doing. You watch – I’m going to write my own script from now on,’ she smiled. I wasn’t sure whether she was telling me, or reassuring herself.

‘Ma’am, I have every confidence in you,’ I replied diplomatically. ‘You know I believe you can achieve whatever you want, as long as you truly believe what you’re doing is right.’ I had said it often enough before, but it was still the endorsement she was looking for.

‘I promise you, Ken, the next few months are going to be fun,’ she added before turning her attention back to the briefing notes that Patrick had prepared so meticulously. A few minutes later she suddenly roared with laughter.

‘We’ll be okay, we’re staying at the British Ambassador’s residence. Poor Patrick and the others are staying at some place called the Yak and Yeti. Sounds awful.’ (In fact, it proved to be a splendid five-star hotel, with well-appointed rooms and excellent cooking, far superior to our spartan accommodation in the diplomatic enclave.) Rightly or wrongly, Diana honestly believed she could do the official job of Princess of Wales much better on her own, no longer hampered by the constant pressure of, and press references to, her failing marriage. She was not able to see that this formal position would inevitably have to change when her union with the heir to the throne was finally dissolved. Perhaps this was a little naive of her, but it was precisely that simplicity which made Diana so appealing – and so successful. She truly believed that she could remain within the system, yet break away at the same time, convinced that her affinity with the ordinary man or woman on the street would always be her saviour. In a cynical world, such optimism was refreshing; moreover, from her point of view the year could not have got off to a better start. The writer and journalist Anthony Holden, a respected commentator on royal matters and one of her more sympathetic chroniclers, agreed. His cover article for the January 1993 edition of
Vanity Fair
trumpeted ‘Di’s Palace Coup’, detailing how she had succeeded in securing her solo future at the ‘expense of her detractors and her depressed husband’. The article continued: ‘Since the
announcement of the end of her marriage on 9 December, Diana, Princess of Wales, has been visibly reborn. There is a new bounce in her step, a cheekier smile on her face, a new gleam in those flirtatious blue eyes …’ And of the separation: ‘At long last the sham was over. For Diana it was a moment of triumph. For Prince Charles it was a crushing defeat…’ The Princess was delighted when she read the article, and for a couple of days at least, it seemed that everywhere she went the magazine came too. Holden had hit the nail on the head for, reinvigorated, she was determined to show her estranged husband a clean pair of high heels in the battle for the hearts and minds of his future subjects.

It was now that something wholly unexpected happened which strengthened her position still further – ‘Camillagate’. At the end of January, tabloid newspapers published extracts from an illicitly recorded telephone conversation between her husband and Camilla Parker Bowles, said to have taken place on 18 December 1989. It was both intimate and distasteful in its contents. Worse, with one eccentric reference during the call to wanting to become a tampon, Charles once again ceded the upper hand to the Princess, both legally and in terms of sympathy for her. The backlash was savage. Establishment figures normally loyal to future King and country were appalled, and some questioned the Prince’s suitability to rule. Buckingham Palace was inundated with calls from reporters. Driven firmly on to the back foot, all Charles Anson, the Queen’s press secretary, and Sir Robert Fellowes, her private secretary, could offer was the tired and often self-defeating ‘no comment’ response. The Prince’s camp was devastated, and
Charles himself personally humiliated. Those closest to him said that they had never seen him so low as at this time. One of his team confided, ‘He has hit rock bottom.’ Cartoonists lampooned him in the press; one cartoon, featuring him talking dirty to his plants, particularly amused the Princess, who collapsed into fits of giggles on seeing it. More importantly, however, Diana’s lawyers had solid evidence to support a cross-petition for adultery should they need to. After all the Palace denials that had followed Andrew Morton’s revelations in his book, which had effectively brought the Prince’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles to public notice, the taped conversation vindicated him, proving that Charles and Camilla had been lovers, if not throughout his entire marriage, then certainly from the end of 1989. (In actual fact, those on the inside knew that the love affair had been restarted earlier in the 1980s.)

There have been all kinds of views about the ‘Camillagate’ tape. Some commentators proffered theories that included a government plot to undermine the Prince, but I doubt that it was anything either so sophisticated or so sinister. As with ‘Dianagate’, when the tape was made, analogue phone technology gave amateur eavesdroppers the chance to listen in. I had consistently reminded the Princess of the importance of using codenames and nicknames, and of never to being too specific when using a mobile phone. It was a lesson she failed to learn, nor had her husband done so.

The Princess, once again revelling in the role of female victim, enjoyed the moment. ‘Game, set and match, Ken,’ she said, clutching a copy of the
Daily Mirror
containing a transcript of the ‘Camillagate’ tape to her as we talked in her sitting room
at Kensington Palace. Later, however, she told me that she had been genuinely shocked by some of the baser comments, particular the Prince’s tampon reference. ‘It’s just sick, Ken,’ she said repeatedly.

It may be that she was genuinely offended by the tape, for she was ready to inflict more pain upon her husband. In February 1993, as the Prince set off, with only a handful of press in tow, on a worthy but, in media terms, dull trip to peasant farms in Mexico, she was taking the plaudits as she prepared for the next step in her career as a roving international ambassador. She knew that she was winning the PR battle hands down, and she was not about to relinquish her superiority. The contrast between Charles’s tour of Mexico and her working visit to Nepal at the beginning of March could not have been starker.

The trip to the tiny mountain Kingdom of Nepal had been made even more attractive to Diana when the Prime Minister, John Major, confirmed that he was sending Baroness Chalker, the Minister for Overseas Development, to accompany her. The Princess was ecstatic at this very obvious declaration of official backing for her solo work. Her mercy mission to help the poor and sick in a Third-World country had now been afforded diplomatic status, and she herself had become an envoy for Her Majesty’s Government. No matter how hard her detractors tried to denigrate her, nobody could take that away from her.

The press loved it, pointing out that this five-day visit was not to be Diana’s normal hearts-and-flowers royal tour. Perhaps ironically, the Queen was credited with upgrading
the trip, and the media reported that the Princess would for the first time be holding active discussions with the Nepalese government. Even so, she wanted it to be a low-key, no-frills working visit, conscious that she needed to keep the Queen on her side. The press went further, however, claiming that the Queen was determined to ensure that the Princess, despite her separation from Charles, would not be denied the privileges befitting her status as the mother of a future British king. Naturally, Diana lapped all this up, believing every word and seemingly oblivious of the pitfalls. For the Establishment, Tory grandee Lord (Alistair) McAlpine described the government’s endorsement for the planned trip as ‘sheer folly’ in his
Sunday
Express
column. ‘This is all folly of the first order,’ he thundered. ‘It will do no good for either the Princess, the Baroness or for that matter for the refugees. The Princess is separated from the Prince and she no longer needs to undertake public duties that will cost the taxpayer large sums.’

The piece effectively parroted the views of the Palace old guard, and of Charles’s staunchest allies, even if they were dressed up as a nod in the direction of saving public money. Diana duly took note. She was confident and riding high on a wave of support, but she was not a fool. As we drove to Gatwick for the flight to Nepal, she was in pensive mood. For all her bravado she was genuinely nervous. This was one of the most significant moments in her career and she was understandably anxious that she might make mistakes. During the nine-hour flight she read and re-read her briefing notes, before eventually taking my advice to sleep for a while. At last we landed in Delhi, where the party was to stay overnight at
the High Commissioner’s residence before continuing to Nepal the following day. After the normal pleasantries and a light meal, the Princess, tired after the flight, retired to her bedroom. Leaving the next morning, we flew into Kathmandu airport, a death-defying experience in itself as the plane approaches between treacherous cloud-covered mountains. From that moment we stepped back in time into the magical, almost medieval kingdom that is Nepal.

The British media were on the lookout for anything that might have been deemed evidence that the Princess’s visit had been downgraded. At the airport, she was greeted by Crown Prince Dipendra and garlanded by small children. The press, however, were convinced that they already had their story when the unfortunate band that welcomed her failed to play the British national anthem when she appeared. This apparent lapse – or ‘insult’ as some papers chose to call it – made front-page headlines, although it did not seem to bother the same journalists that the same thing had occurred in Egypt, Pakistan and Hungary in accordance with the protocol governing working, as distinct from ‘state’, visits. Any royal reporter worth his expenses would have known perfectly well that the protocol for the visit would have been agreed between the two courts, British and Nepalese, months in advance. Still, no journalist lets the truth stand in the way of a good story. For the media, the apparent snub was enough to set the ball rolling. It did not seem to occur to them that in fact the Princess had herself requested that the working trip should be treated in a low-key, informal way, but the upshot was that the Nepalese authorities were furious. The article that upset them the most,
however, was one by the
Daily Telegraph
correspondent Robert Hardman, who claimed they had laid a ‘threadbare red carpet’ with which to greet the Princess. One bemused official complained to me, ‘Inspector, it is our best red carpet, and it is brand new.’ I told the insulted official not to take it to heart and he seemed placated when I assured him that the Princess had thought his red carpet was one of the best she had ever walked on.

Crown Prince Dipendra made small talk with the Princess as we drove to the Ambassador’s official residence, where she retired to her room to freshen up. A short while later she called me up to her room.

‘Ken, I know you want me secure, but is it necessary to put me behind bars?’ she asked, pointing to the barred windows. She was joking. Then she took a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s make-or-break time. By the way, Ken, do you think it’s wise to give the Crown Prince an engraved hip flask for a present? He looks as though he likes a drink,’ she said prophetically. Eight years later the Old Etonian Crown Prince would gun down his mother and father and other members of his family before turning the weapon on himself, in a drunken rage brought on because he had been banned from marrying his mistress. Luckily, he showed no homicidal tendencies on that trip, otherwise my Glock might have had to come out of its holster, and I am sure my shooting the Crown Prince would have been a difficult action to explain.

Quite early on in the trip the Princess turned to me and said: ‘I hope we’ve got the
Gaget
, Ken. You know everything will go wrong without it.’

Much to her consternation, I had to admit that the said item had been left in a drawer back at Kensington Palace.

‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get it out here.’

Le Gaget
was perhaps our finest wind-up, and an almost constant source of laughter. The small vibrator, bought as a practical joke after a staff night out in Paris during Diana’s official visit there the previous November, had become her lucky omen. I had persuaded her sister Sarah, who was acting lady-in-waiting on the trip, to hide it in Diana’s handbag the following morning, which she did. The Princess only discovered it while going through her bag in between meetings with President Chirac and Paul McCartney, and found the whole episode extremely funny. From that moment
Le Gaget
became her (secret) mascot for all future royal trips, and woe betide the secretary who forgot to pack it.