Prince William (51 page)

The evening party was for 300 of their closest friends and family. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh left the younger generations to it. The Queen had said to William, ‘You don't really want me and Grandpa there in the evening, do you? So if you don't mind, we're going to allow you and your friends to have the run of the place.' She had invited William and Kate to spend their wedding night at the Palace, which for logistical reasons was sensible, and she personally selected the suite they should stay in and checked that all was in order for them. She chose the Belgian Suite that President Obama and his wife had stayed in, a stunning set of rooms which get the morning light.

As the guests arrived back at the Palace, having gone away for a few hours after the lunch and changed into black tie, they were bagpiped through a candlelit courtyard into pre-dinner drinks where vintage pink champagne and peach bellinis awaited. Kate had changed into another flowing white satin Sarah Burton creation, with a little angora bolero cardigan, and looked radiant. Dinner, at tables of ten in the ballroom, was a veritable feast devised by top chef and restaurateur Anton Mosimann. They began with seafood from Wales, went on to lamb from Highgrove and finished with a trio of mini-puddings – all of it accompanied by distinguished wines. After coffee and petit fours came the speeches and the high spot of the night.

Harry, acting as compère, completely stole the show, with impeccable comic timing and brilliant one-liners. He had everyone in tears of laughter as he hilariously recounted tales from their childhood of being beaten up by his older brother and shot by air rifles, and teased him rotten about everything from his romantic style to his receding hairline. But there were emotional moments too. William had said at his engagement that in giving Kate his
mother's ring, he hoped to include her in all the fun and excitement, and both boys made sure she was part of the evening celebrations, by each making moving tributes to her in the midst of all the mirth.

The father of the bride joked about the time William had almost blown the roof off the house when he landed his helicopter in the garden, and the awkward conversation they had had when he asked for his daughter's hand in marriage, but he also spoke warmly about William and about how well he fitted into the family. William returned the compliment and spoke movingly about Kate. The final speech was a double-act. Thomas van Straubenzee and James Meade took to the floor and delivered a series of quick gags about their friend, which again had the audience helpless with laughter.

Dancing followed until three o'clock in the morning. For two full hours the Brit Award-winning singer Ellie Goulding and her band played live, then DJs took over with a mixture of music, and the booming bass could be heard halfway down the Mall. The final number was ‘She Loves You' by the Beatles, which had everyone on the dance floor singing their hearts out, after which they were shepherded out into the gardens once again, for William and Kate to make their second and final departure of the day. This time their going-away car was a bright yellow little Fiat 500 – another surprise for their friends and family – which William had secretly borrowed from David Linley. But since they were spending the night at the Palace, the chauffeur didn't have far to go. While the guests drunkenly cheered and waved and wished them luck, including both sets of parents – everyone stayed to the very end – they stood up with their heads through the open roof laughing and waving, while they were driven around two corners and delivered to another door. ‘It was simply magical,' said one guest. ‘The best party ever imaginable.'

Harry, still in party mood, as they all were, then led all the young onto a waiting coach and over to the Goring Hotel where they carried on partying safely and privately until five. The brothers had discussed what might happen when they were kicked out of
the Palace and realised that if everyone just spilled out into Mayfair and the usual nightclubs at three in the morning, those places would be crawling with inquisitive diary journalists. Better to keep everyone together, and so they organised an after-party at the Goring.

Nothing gave them greater satisfaction than successfully thwarting the press, and in the case of William's stag weekend, completely outwitting them. Harry and Guy Pelly organised it and, it was said, at first booked a weekend of watersports in Exmouth, Devon. News of that venue had supposedly been leaked, and so they went to Norfolk instead, almost certainly to the van Cutsems' estate. The
Sun
was the first newspaper to get it right. A group of about twelve of William's best friends drove down to north Devon on the Friday of the last weekend in March, and stayed at Hartland Abbey, a secluded twelfth-century former monastery surrounded by beautiful gardens and parkland that lead to the Atlantic coast. It is owned and lived in by his friend, George Stucley and his family, and although house and gardens are open to the public at times, they took over the whole place and enjoyed complete privacy.

Speculation was also rife about where they would spend their honeymoon, and the Prince's office were as tight-lipped about that as about the stag do. The bookmakers had Kenya as the favourite, with Scotland and Jordan – where Kate spent a couple of years as a child – as runners-up. Other suggestions were the Caribbean islands of Mustique, Bequia and Necker or Lizard Island off the coast of Queensland. As their helicopter took off from Buckingham Palace the morning after the wedding, it was assumed they were going to one of these locations; if not, then to somewhere equally exotic. But to everyone's surprise it was announced that very afternoon that after a Bank Holiday weekend in Britain, William was going back to work at Valley, Kate to their cottage and the housekeeping, and the honeymoon would happen at an unspecified date in the future.

The reason for the sudden change of plan was that the hotel where they had chosen to go was fully booked for the period
immediately after the wedding. And they were not prepared to ask the hotel for special favours, which would undoubtedly have meant either moving people around or turning some other couple away. ‘There's no way we're going to do that,' said William. ‘It could be
their
honeymoon.' Clarence House gave no explanation for the change of plan. If they had given the real reason, it would have allowed the media, frantic to know where they were going, to narrow their search. As it was, when they flew off in a private jet nearly two weeks later, their destination took the bookies by surprise – but it didn't take the press long to figure out that they had flown to the Seychelles. What they didn't know was which of the many small islands they had hopped to from the mainland.

They had chosen North Island. It fitted everything they were looking for, and the Seychelles' government was very happy to help keep the media at bay. In the Seychelles it's against the law to take someone's photograph without their permission – and just to be sure, the local coastguards patrolled off-shore around the island for the ten days William and Kate stayed there. The day before they left they personally thanked the individual coastguards.

They wanted to find somewhere that neither of them had been to before, and although they went to the Seychelles after their reconciliation in 2007, they'd stayed on a different island. They also wanted somewhere that was fun, exciting and different, and where they could do some serious diving – something they both loved. And perhaps most important of all, it had to be somewhere that was guaranteed to be totally private – and in this day and age, privacy doesn't come cheap. The rate at North Island is a fraction under £2,000 per person per night, and includes all meals and virtually all drinks, scuba diving and snorkelling; also windsurfing, sea kayaking, and just about everything else you could dream of, including mountain bikes and a buggy for getting around the island. The hotel owns all 462 acres of it, and has only eleven rooms, which are large and luxurious individual villas, each with a private plunge pool and butler service. There is no mobile phone signal, and nobody comes to the island unless they are a guest at the hotel.

They found the suitably eco-friendly North Island themselves – and paid for it themselves. The use of the private jet to take them there and back was a wedding gift from the Duke of Westminster, but the hotel was down to them – and they researched how they were spending their money very carefully. They trawled the internet and consulted
Time Out
guide books, and books about the best diving sites in the world, and gradually narrowed the search down to this one speck of an island in the Indian Ocean, which promised peace and privacy.

While they were there, the Queen was on her first-ever state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an historic exercise in reconciliation and friendship, and, between dives, William assiduously followed her progress online. ‘She was so excited about it,' he said. ‘This was like a big door opening up to her that had been locked for so long. We all wanted it to go smoothly because it was such a big deal. I was keeping a careful watch.'The visit was a triumph and the Queen was visibly delighted by the outcome. ‘As far as she was concerned, in terms of the relationship between Britain and Ireland and the Troubles, it was time to move on from that. What's happened has happened and no one wants to cover it up. We must make sure all the right things are done and that the right people are said sorry to or vice versa.'

After ten days on their paradise island they left more than footprints behind. They had made a lasting impression. The Seychelles High Commissioner to Great Britain, Patrick Pillay, said of them, ‘In a world of so much turmoil, they bring a welcome and much-needed breath of fresh air with their warmth and humility.'

CROSSING CONTINENTS

When the twenty-year-old Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales, he was already working as a full-time member of the Family Firm, so, immediately after their honeymoon, she was thrown into Royal duties alongside him – the first of which, fittingly for the new Princess, was a tour of the principality of Wales. William is still a full-time search and rescue pilot, fitting in occasional Royal duties around his work schedule, and after the honeymoon he was back on duty at RAF Valley. So Kate's introduction to official Royal life was to be gradual. But before his engagement, William had agreed to carry out an official tour of Canada in the summer of 2011, the country where he had caused such a sensation as a shy teenager the year after his mother's death. Kate's initiation, therefore, by accident rather than design, would be ten days alongside him in Canada.

They arrived in Ottawa on 30 June. At that point, they were the world's most famous and feted couple, and were treated to a rapturous reception. It was the eve of Canada Day, the most important day in the country's calendar, when everyone takes to the streets to celebrate with parties and fireworks. The Canadians, a warm and friendly people, who had doted on the Princess of Wales, were thrilled that William and Kate had chosen their country for their first foreign tour. It was also, poignantly, the eve of what would have been his mother's fiftieth birthday.

The Governor General, David Johnston, set the mood of the tour by saying, ‘Welcome to Canada – the honeymoon capital of the Commonwealth'. The crowd of thousands cheered loudly.
William responded with the first of many bilingual speeches, and won hearts, as he struggled with his French pronunciation, by saying, ‘It will improve as we go on.'

I was one of fourteen hundred accredited international media who flocked to Canada to observe their progress around the country, and I was there in Ottawa that day. Having also been in Wales in 1981, to observe Diana work her magic on the Welsh people on that first tour with Prince Charles, it was interesting to compare the two – and I had a strong sense of déjà vu.

When Diana had stepped from their car thirty years ago, and stretched out her arms to clasp the dozens of hands reaching for hers, it was obvious that she had something special. She was just twenty-one, and had done nothing like this in her life – she had even been rather shy meeting strangers – but she had an instinctive ability to engage with the public that no amount of training could ever have bettered. At one engagement after another, as the rain soaked her beautiful outfits, she smiled, she laughed, she patted children's heads or rubbed their cold hands between her own. She bent down to chat to people in wheelchairs, and sat on hospital beds, holding patients' hands, always managing to find the perfect remark for everyone she met.

Strange as it might sound to today's readers, such familiarity was new to the Royal Family. Even the walkabout was still quite new. Until the Queen's visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1970, neither she nor her family wandered over to talk randomly to the crowds that lined the streets. Those crowds received a smile and a royal wave. Theirs was the formality of a bygone age and Diana's approach struck a chord with the people. The Welsh fell in love with her. The crowds groaned audibly, and embarrassingly, when they saw that Diana was not taking their side of the street, and that they were getting Charles instead. He ended up joking that he was just there to collect flowers for his wife, but it must have hurt.

There was none of that in Canada. William and Kate travelled extensively, visiting seven cities in five provinces, and people were thrilled to see them both. Everywhere they went there were chants
of ‘Will and Kate, Will and Kate'; people held up placards with big hearts on them and slogans like ‘Canada loves Will and Kate' and ‘Will and Kate, You Were Worth The Wait', and the young screamed when either one of them headed in their direction. People turned out in their thousands, many had come from hundreds of miles away and the wait was really long – five or six hours was not unusual, sometimes for nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of the pair – but no one seemed to mind. They all had mobile phones or cameras and they were just happy to have the picture that showed they were there.