Читать книгу Shadows of a Princess - Patrick Jephson - Страница 11

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TWO

IN THE PINK

Some events can be seen as milestones only in retrospect, while at the time they pass almost unnoticed. This was not such an event. The court circular for 28 January 1988 spelt it out in black and white: Jephson was going to the Palace and an insistent inner voice told me his life would never be the same again.

Reaction among my friends and relations was mixed. The American, Doug, thought it was a quaint English fairy tale. My father thought it inevitably meant promotion (he was wrong). My stepmother thought it was nice (she was mostly right). My brother thought it would make me an unbearably smug nuisance (no change).

Although I would never have admitted it, I thought I must be pretty clever, and I apologize belatedly to everyone who had to witness it. That was lesson one: breathing royal air can seriously damage your ability to laugh at yourself. It is sometimes called ‘red carpet fever’ and usually only lasts a few months, but severe cases never recover and spend the rest of their lives believing in their own acquired importance.

I reported to the offices of the Prince and Princess at the end of April. In those halcyon days their staff occupied a joint office in St James’s Palace. The couple shared a private secretary, a comptroller, a press secretary and numerous administrative officials who helped run an organization some hundred strong. They themselves lived at KP and made the journey to ‘SJP’ when required.

In the Prince’s case this was frequently and – unlike his wife – he kept an office at St James’s for the purpose. Given the clutter of books and papers with which he usually surrounds himself, this elegant room – all limewash panelling and thick carpet – seemed strangely anonymous, its few personal touches almost an afterthought. The cleverly concealed lighting and carefully selected antiques seemed to have taken priority. Its enormous desk was naked but for a photo of William and Harry, while from the mantelpiece an unusual triple-portrait photo of his mother, aunt and grandmother looked down on the inmate with matronly appraisal. The place smelt of polish and expensive fabrics and in every way satisfied what I suppose are masculine preferences in orderliness and understated good taste. It was a constant reminder – along with its equivalent in cars, clothes and other accoutrements – that the heir’s cares were shouldered in at least tolerable comfort.

The penalty of operating out of two palaces was the amount of time – and often anxiety – expended on getting from one to the other. My tendency to plan journeys to coincide with the sedate passage of the Household Cavalry always raised my blood pressure. I almost came to believe that the Mounted Division only ventured out in splendour to block Constitution Hill when they had word that the Princess had summoned me to an urgent meeting in KP.

There were benefits too. Even the most conscientious private secretary could sometimes be grateful that his boss kept at a distance from the office. Moreover, when peace and quiet and decent coffee were elusive at SJP, I often took refuge in the tranquillity of the KP Equerries’ Room. The house staff always kept a warm welcome and would let you raid the pantry. Also, more often than I cared to admit, it was useful to be ‘unobtainable’ while stuck in traffic somewhere on Kensington Gore, although the fitting of mobile phones to office cars made this an increasingly dodgy excuse.

The Wales household occupied offices in St James’s that had previously been used by the Lord Chamberlain’s Department. The previous occupants’ more sedate tastes were apparent in the dense brown carpet and heavy furniture. Against the sober backdrop of high ceilings, ornate plasterwork and yellowing net curtains the youthful Wales staff sometimes seemed like children who had set up their office camp in an abandoned gentlemen’s club. The average age could not have been more than 22, and the secretaries were almost without exception from backgrounds where girls were expected to be seen and heard and enjoyed being both.

At that time the office worked as one unit with Their Royal Highnesses’ private secretary – the genial Sir John Riddell – presiding over a team which, on the surface at least, owed equal loyalty to both. I soon discovered, however, that the Princess’s small component was still regarded as a minor addition to what was essentially an enlarged bachelor establishment. This was especially evident in the planning of joint programmes, when, as if part of the natural order, the Princess’s requirements took second place – and sometimes not even that, unless the Prince’s staff were gently reminded of her involvement. Despite this, thanks to a lot of goodwill, it was an addition that was loftily tolerated, despite its perceived irrelevance to the main work of the organization.

The private secretary’s room lay at one end of a string of smaller offices on the first floor of York House. At the other end a swing door separated us from the decidedly grown-up world of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Chivalry. Between the two I found offices for the deputy private secretary, the comptroller and the lady-in-waiting, interspersed with larger shared offices for lowlier forms of life such as equerries and secretaries.

My predecessor Commander Richard Aylard and his opposite number, the Prince’s equerry Major Christopher Lavender, shared an office that seemed to be the size of a small ballroom, inelegantly partitioned to make a small adjoining space for three secretaries (or ‘lady clerks’ in Palace-speak). I was planted behind a small table in a corner, from which I could observe the veterans at work. Now, I thought, I’ll find out what an equerry actually does.

Many people then – and since – made dismissive comments about equerries being needed only to hand round gin and tonic or carry flowers for the lady-in-waiting, both tasks being about on the limit of my perceived ability. I performed these tasks on numerous occasions, but even at the outset I knew there must be rather more to a job which provoked such envy and contempt. I had an idea – reinforced by a helpful introductory letter from Richard – that I was expected to help implement the Princess’s programme and generally act as a kind of glorified aide-de-camp.

Listening to the confident instructions being rapped out by Richard and Christopher in a series of seemingly incessant phone calls, I was gripped by panic. How would I ever know what to do? How would I ever develop the easy blend of nonchalant authority and patient good humour that seemed to be the better courtier’s stock in trade? Especially when all the time my novice high-wire act would be under unblinking scrutiny from royal employers, sceptical colleagues and – worst of all – the royal press pack.

My panic deepened as I contemplated my first task. Thinking he was easing me in gently, Richard had thoughtfully given me the job of writing a memorandum to the Princess outlining programme options for a forthcoming visit to the West Country. I stared transfixed at the notepad in front of me, my mind as blank as the paper. The letterhead grandly announced the writer as ‘Equerry to HRH the Princess of Wales’ and I dumbly wondered if I would ever have the temerity to sign anything that followed.

Eventually a lucky inspiration came to me. On the pretext of familiarizing myself with the office filing system (a feat still incomplete seven years later), I sauntered into the secretaries’ room. The girl-talk came to a temporary halt as three laughing pairs of eyes appraised me.

‘We’ve decided to call you PJ,’ the senior secretary said. ‘We can’t possibly call you Pat in the office and there’s already a Patrick in BP.’ Thinking of other things I could – and no doubt would – be called, I decided to accept this tag without protest. The secretaries’ nicknames were acutely observed and tended to become universally accepted. Compared to some, I was fortunate.

‘Can I help you, PJ?’ asked the girl with the eyes that laughed the most. Jo had already been introduced as my secretary and was thus a crucial partner in the adventure that was about to begin. I explained my predicament and she rummaged in a filing cabinet that I could not help noticing seemed to act as an overflow for her handbag as well as secure storage for sensitive papers.

‘We’ve got some examples here somewhere which you could copy …’ With a triumphant toss of chestnut hair and a jangle of bracelets, she handed me some files in the distinctive dark red of the Wales office. ‘When you’ve drafted it, I’ll type it for you. But we’d better get a move on. The Bag closes in half an hour.’

This was obviously an important piece of information. I checked the instinct to rush back to my desk and instead asked what the ‘Bag’ was. The girls looked at each other significantly. ‘That is the Bag.’ A manicured nail indicated a red plastic pouch the size of a small pillowcase. It sat in isolation on one of the less cluttered shelves next to a basket of papers on which I could glimpse Anne’s distinctive writing.

The Bag came to rule my life. It was the main means of written communi-cation with KP and so carried the whole catalogue of information, advice, pleading, cajoling and obfuscation which seemed to comprise our output. It also carried our letters of petition, contrition and – occasionally – resignation. These were mixed with bills, pills, fan mail, hate mail, and any private mail that had not already gone directly to the KP breakfast tray. Those envelopes had to be delivered unopened on pain of death, but it was by no means obvious which were entreaties from ardent suitors and which were complaints about office incompetence from loyal subjects. A secretary who could sniff the difference (sometimes literally) was worth her weight in gold.

In return the Bag welcomed us each morning with the overnight products of the royal pen. Schoolday comparisons with waiting for prep to be marked were inescapable, especially when alternative programmes such as the one I was struggling to draw up for the day in the West Country had been submitted for consideration.

The art, I discovered, was to submit the options in a way which led the Princess imperceptibly to the desired choice. The quickest way to learn that art was to watch what happened at the receiving end. Often, when I had been out with her all day, the Princess would find the Bag waiting in the car that came to collect us. It could be a tense moment. If we had enjoyed a good day, a bad Bag could take the shine off it in a second; and it took a very good Bag indeed to restore shine to a day that had been lousy.

She would snap the little plastic seal, pull back the heavy zip and delve inside. Balancing the inner cardboard file on her lap, she quickly sorted the papers into piles. Fashion catalogues or designers’ bills were dealt with first; then press cuttings; then loose minutes from the secretaries about things like therapists’ appointments or school events for the boys; then personal mail – some of it saved for private reading later; then real work – memos from me that required a decision, outline programmes, draft speeches, invitations, suggested letters … the list was endless.

She would hold out her hand for my pen, then go to work. She was quick and decisive – and expected me to be the same. This was at least partly to draw a distinction between herself and the Prince, whose capacity to sit on paperwork was legendary.

What worked best was to reduce a complicated question to a few important points – the bits she really had to know – and then offer two alternative answers. It was pretty basic staffwork, but quite intellectually satisfying. Soon I could anticipate fairly accurately her reaction to most questions. If I expected her to go for option A (‘Yes please’) but for reasons too complicated to explain I wanted her instead to pick option B (‘No thanks’), all I had to do was explain that A, while superficially attractive, risked controversy/conflict with another member of the royal family/bad press. ‘We don’t want to do that, do we, Patrick?’ she would say and I would look judicious, as if weighing up the pros and cons, and then agree with her. The pen would mark a big tick next to option B and everybody would be happy.

Mind you, she would not have been the Princess of Wales if there had not also been times when she would do the exact opposite out of spite. It seldom had anything to do with the pros and cons then. Eventually, however, I could sometimes predict these moods too. Then the procedure was reversed: all I had to do was extol the virtues of option A and she would automatically tick option B. It was a great game.

Much later, the game became less fun. The Princess bought a shredder and would unblushingly destroy papers that displeased her, then accuse me of not showing them to her in the first place. This enabled her to claim that she was not being supported, that her office (me) was incompetent, etc., etc. After a few such happy experiences, I learned to keep duplicates of anything that might end up in her shredder. I would then produce them when the original mysteriously ‘disappeared’. She hated that.

On my first day, of course, I knew none of this. Back at my temporary desk, I perused the files Jo had given me. One, labelled simply with ‘Merseyside’ and a date, was thick with papers and looked as if it had already made several arduous journeys to Liverpool in the rain. The other was pristine, contained two small sheets of pink paper and was labelled ‘Savoy lunch’.

‘Merseyside’ looked more promising, so, ignoring the background sounds of efficient equerries at work, I delved into its dog-eared contents. These read rather like a story whose plot assembles only gradually. Some characters – such as the Prince and Princess – we already know from previous novels in the series. Others we know by title if not yet as distinct personalities – the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Constable, the local director of the Central Office of Information. Others again are complete new-comers whose place in the coming narrative is tantalizingly obscure. Will the leader of the Acorns Playgroup outbid the chairperson of the Drug Awareness workshop in the competition for the selector’s eye? Are the patronages they represent in or out of favour and will this affect their chances? Or will all be bulldozed aside by the requirement to fête the opening of a semiconductor factory whose oriental masters might repeat their largesse in another unemployment blackspot if given sufficient royal ‘face’?

Such musings crowded into my mind as I composed my first memo for the Bag. What style would be best? I had already seen a document addressed to the Queen in which, as precedent demands, the writer opened with the sonorous ‘Madam, With my humble duty …’ and, although I relished such verbal quaintness, it did not seem right for the lively Princess who had given me lunch. The examples I found in the ‘Merseyside’ file were more reassuring, opening with a simple ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’ and proceeding to describe complex choices in simple, straightforward English. The only peculiarities I noticed were neat abbreviations for unwieldy royal titles (‘YRHes’ for ‘Your Royal Highnesses’) and a brisk respectfulness (‘As YRH will recall …’).

Eventually Jo forced me to hand over my meagre draft. Once printed on thick office stationery, its tentative phrases took on an air of authority which quite had me fooled until I saw my signature at the bottom. Early days, I thought to myself, as I saw it committed to the Bag which was then promptly sealed. ‘I’m going to the High Street during lunch so I can drop the Bag at KP nice and early. You never know, we might get it back this afternoon,’ said Jo, making for the door.

I returned to my corner and sought comfort in thoughts of lunch. Suddenly the phone on my desk rang. I went into shock. It had not rung before. What should I do now? Everybody else was already talking on their own phones, so this one was down to me.

It rang again, sounding louder. In my nervous, beginner’s state it even sounded royal. I picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ I said, clearing my throat. That didn’t sound very pukka, I thought.

‘Hello?’ said a man’s voice. It was crackly and faint, but vaguely familiar. ‘Who’s that?’ The voice sounded rather tetchy.

‘Who’s calling?’ I asked, trying to sound as if I was getting a grip.

‘It’s the Prince of Wales speaking,’ said the voice. Definitely tetchy. Panic.

‘Oh … sorry Sir. Um …’

Richard had finished his call and, from the far side of the room, his antennae had already picked up my plight. Dabbing a key on his fiercely complicated-looking phone, he cut in smoothly. ‘It’s Richard here, Sir …’

I imagined I could hear the relief in His Master’s Voice. What a great start, I thought.

The phone came to rule my life just as much as the Bag and, by its nature, it proved a shrill and insistent mistress. I admit now that I was too often ready to allow my patient secretaries to screen calls, so I was left at the end of the day with a callback list which reproachfully catalogued awkward conversations shirked and good news still untold.

My excuse – and it seemed a good one – was that I was fully occupied with priority calls, mostly from the Princess. She was a virtuoso with the instrument and I quickly came to measure the mood of the day by the first syllable of her morning greeting. It might have been telepathy, but I sometimes felt as if I knew just from the sound of the ringing tone that it was her. Taking a deep breath, I would pick up the receiver. Sometimes she would come straight through, calling from the car or her mobile. At other times she would be connected by the Palace switchboard.

The familiar voices of the imperturbable operators could spark a reply in neat adrenaline. I became quite good at interpreting the subtle nuances of their voices too. Some are indelibly linked in my mind to traumatic events of which they were the first harbingers. Invariably kind, often humorous, sometimes wonderfully motherly, they must have assisted unwittingly at many executions. On a shamefully rare visit to their subterranean den, I was not surprised to see knitting in progress.

The background noises could be a clue to how much you were going to enjoy the call that followed. Silence meant she was at her desk, probably perusing the Bag and about to ask an awkward question. If she was in the car and it was early morning, she was most likely on her way back from her morning swim and anxious to resolve a nagging problem that had surfaced during her 50 lengths.

Later in the day it probably meant she was shopping, so expect to be quizzed on men’s taste in cashmere sweaters. The sound of a Harrier jet in the background meant she was under the hairdryer, so expect either the hairdresser’s latest filthy joke or a piece of gossip which the Princess had picked up earlier in the day (‘Did you know the Duchess of Blank’s aromatherapist was having a raging affair with your neighbour?’). The sound of running bathwater meant we were in for a playful 10 minutes during which I was supposed to imagine the saintly form up to its neck in bubbles. The distinctive sound of a dress being unzipped meant she was having a fitting with her current designer … or something.

That first syllable was crucial. It could be warm and conspiratorial: ‘Patrick! Have you seen the papers?’ This induced a cautious relief at being singled out for speculation about the morning’s unfortunate tabloid target, usually another member of the royal family.

Or it could be flat and accusatory: ‘Patrick … have you seen the papers?’ (The ‘yet’ was silent.) This produced a state of high alert. Good preparation was vital – I always tried to have an answer ready for every current subject of her potential displeasure. She was often working from a different list, however.

Or it could be light and carefree: ‘Patrick, have you seen the papers?’ This might be an invitation to share joy at a prominent story showing her in a good light. Anything that described her as ‘serious’, ‘independent’ or ‘caring’ would have this effect. Descriptions of her beauty or fashion genius got a similar but less fulsome reaction. A critical story, however – especially if she had predicted it – meant trouble. The light-hearted tone was designed to lower your guard, the better to deliver either a stinging rebuke or an invitation to join in the persecution of the perceived offender.

It was easy to be fooled, though. I quickly learned how misleading such judgements could be as I witnessed dramatically different moods being signalled to different listeners all in the space of one car journey. It was pointless to question such inconsistency. What mattered was the mood allocated to you and, until it changed, life was at least straightforward, if at times uncomfortable.

No less impressive was her use of the phone as scalpel and feather duster. Under the latter, the most recalcitrant member of the ‘old guard’ would wag his tail with pleasure, but under the former, discarded favourites dumbly suffered their excommunication. In severe cases, any subsequent wailing or gnashing of teeth could be neatly avoided simply with a change of number. The magic digits – the coveted code to personal access – would abruptly fail to connect.

The common denominator was her absolute command of the conversation. This she achieved with artfully presented moods and a surprising fluency which served as a reminder of her mental sharpness. Her sense of timing was sometimes uncanny. In my case she would usually ring when I was late coming back from lunch.

Ultimately, of course, there was the royal hang-up, which could lend unprecedented significance to a simple click. On the other hand, a good call could put a smile on your face for the rest of the day.

I had hardly finished congratulating myself on completing my first piece of written work in my new job when I noticed a lull in the hitherto ceaseless activity at the equerries’ desks. In unison, Richard and Christopher stretched and looked at their watches. It was 1.15, which my internal clock had already informed me was well past its customary lunch call.

‘Good heavens, look at the time, better go to lunch!’ said Richard.

‘Come on!’ said Christopher in a voice which would have galvanized his beloved Ghurkas, and I fell in behind the two veterans as we marched at speed down the stairs, across Ambassador’s Court and out into the sunshine of Green Park.

Approaching Buckingham Palace from St James’s, the great building seems less intimidating than when seen from the grand processional route of The Mall. Visiting heads of state, arriving by the more impressive route, can look up with relief from their open carriage as the Palace fills the horizon, knowing their horse-drawn ordeal is nearly over, while heedless tourists reverse suicidally into the traffic as they struggle to squeeze the whole building into their viewfinders. From Green Park the view is oblique, framed by leafy branches and altogether more human in scale.

The short walk between the Palaces became a well-worn route for me as I shuttled to and from the senior household offices with their Olympian denizens. Sometimes the journey was an opportunity for self-congratulatory reflection or garden party preening. At other times it was a true via dolorosa as the cares of the whole monarchy seemed to reach out at me from a hundred faceless windows on the monolithic facade.

When great events were in the offing, the international TV networks set up their outside broadcast studios among the trees, creating a media gypsy camp under a forest of aerial masts. From this cover, preoccupied courtiers could be ambushed as they hurried by, later to discover that they had become unwitting walk-on extras in the main feature. As additional entertainment, Lancaster House would occasionally lay on a G7 or NATO summit, allowing us the chance to peer at the visiting Presidents and Prime Ministers as they were conveyed past in their limousines.

Safely across the pedestrian crossing at the foot of Constitution Hill, our small detachment marched through the gates into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, the focus of a hundred pairs of jaded tourist eyes. Were these men in the Simpson’s off-the-peg suits important? They did not look royal, that was certain (especially the one at the back who was explaining to the police that he had not yet got his security pass). But just in case, we had better take a photograph anyway – through the railings as if they were animals in a zoo; or inmates, I sometimes thought, at a secure institution.

Buckingham Palace has two main working entrances – one round the side near the kitchens and one at the front on the right as you look at it. Like everything else, use of each entrance is determined by your place in the hierarchy. Being ‘household’, we strode proprietorially up the steps to the Privy Purse Door, thus being spared the indignity of queuing up with the delivery men at the side gate.

A liveried doorman spared us the further indignity of having to open the door ourselves and, I noticed, greeted Richard and Christopher as if he really recognized them. This is the life, I thought, as my nostrils had their first sniff of the unique Palace smell: a mixture of polish and hot light bulbs with just a hint of mothballs. My feet at last felt qualified to pad across the red carpet as I followed my hungry guides into the bowels of the building.

It was as well that I stayed close to them, because the route from the door to the dining room was labyrinthine to the uninitiated. The entrance gave on to a stairwell, which gave on to a corridor, which jinked, climbed, narrowed and divided before at last turning into the great entrance hall from which the dining room debouched. Even after several months’ practice the journey could seem hazardous, though whether this was from fear of getting lost or getting found I was never quite sure. The latter was a real anxiety at moments of internal tension, as my route even to the nearest exit offered ample opportunity for unexpected encounters with the Palace’s most senior inhabitants.

Running this gauntlet was made slightly more pleasurable by detouring into the Queen’s Equerry’s Room for a preprandial drink. Every day without fail, it was full of courtiers intent on gin and gossip. While exploring the drinks tray on that first day I learned another lesson which time was to reinforce. In a way reminiscent of the tolerance extended by the Prince’s organization to his wife’s, the senior household played forbearant host to its subordinate satellites. Among these the Waleses’ organization constituted the most important – and certainly the largest – planet, but all down to the merest Pluto of royalty theoretically shared equal status as members of household. This entitled them to walk on red carpet, cruise the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and enjoy a number of other perks, one of whose daily rituals I was now experiencing.

The atmosphere reminded me of one of those better service messes where the members had not forgotten some basic rules of communal living, principally the endangered art of making polite conversation. This was not surprising given the preponderance of ex-military personnel, but the similarity began to fray when I listened to the shoptalk which, inevitably, dominated the conversation. Beneath the surface conviviality I slowly detected a lack of the kind of common purpose to be expected even in the least cohesive wardroom.

This was obviously a valuable clearing house for the various informal royal intelligence services. The principal members of the royal family were represented by their private staffs and the heads of the Palace’s great departments represented the behind-the-scenes support structure. This mixture of disparate interests genteelly fenced and bartered in a way that cannot have changed much, I supposed, since Victorian times. Then as now, representatives of lesser households might have felt themselves mere cousins admitted to the ancestral seat where the inner family carried on with its laundry, hiding its resentment that the visitors had the intrusiveness of kin without the discretion of polite guests. The soothing properties of civilized conversation were thus much needed – and were generously employed, not least in greeting the new boy, for which I was duly grateful.

The room quickly emptied in a general move towards lunch. I joined the throng feeling I was among friendly people whose friendship would nevertheless have carefully controlled limits. I would be accepted subject to certain constraints, most of which appeared reasonable to me. These would be imposed by my comparative youth, junior position, temporary appointment and membership of a subordinate organization, tenants of a property outside the pale. In short, we were tolerated. Politely, entertainingly and often warmly, but still only tolerated.

As senior staff, our ‘canteen’ was the Buckingham Palace Household Dining Room. In its scale, decor, portraiture and appointments it encouraged us to feel reassuringly exclusive. We helped ourselves from a sideboard and sat where we thought the best conversation could be found – or avoided.

On that first day I was surprised by the variety of my fellow lunchers. There were the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting – treated with universal respect – and the Queen’s private secretaries – also treated with respect, at least by me. But there were others further down the hierarchy who hinted at the bewildering diversity of the royal household. There was the captain of the Queen’s Flight looking smooth. There was the keeper of the Royal Collection, looking not at all like Anthony Blunt. There was the press secretary, wearing his poker-player’s face. And there was the senior policeman, looking surprised to find himself there at all.

I am sure I did too. My morale was soon boosted when, in a ceremony that beat all the majestic pomp and circumstance of the British Crown, the duty footman dymo-taped my name on to a napkin ring. I may only have been temporary, and I would often lunch somewhere else, but now I was a member of the club.

That first afternoon I strolled back across the park to St James’s feeling pretty pleased with myself. It was a sensation that soon became unfamiliar. The job often made me feel so anxious that the outward perks – even my own napkin ring – seemed like a bad joke. On some days I would have swapped them all for a friendly Portakabin somewhere, anywhere, else. As I returned to my new office that day, however, I was beginning to believe that I could act my part. From my temporary perch I felt the first stirrings of confidence as I measured Richard’s desk with my eye and contemplated a suitable fate for his Australian beer mat if he was careless enough to leave it behind when he moved along the corridor to his new post as comptroller.

The afternoon’s programme was intended to begin my education in Palace life. I was to meet two of the more significant Palace office-holders for ‘a chat’, and in their own way they neatly illustrated the latent tensions that I had detected at lunch. There was an old guard, almost literally. They were mostly ex-Guards Regiment, not very qualified in anything very much, but at least superficially friendly, if tending to be dogmatic about How Things Should Be Done. Then there was a younger guard, less overtly military, less dogmatic, no less friendly and arguably better qualified. As members of the heir’s office, we were usually grouped with this second category, not least by temperament.

The royal household is sometimes still caricatured as being made up of faceless courtiers drawn from public schools and the Army. During my time there, it was still quite true that both types were in the majority. Even those from a City or diplomatic background had mostly worn uniform at some stage, but despite a predictably establishment outlook – which I shared – most also had a very realistic attitude to the institution they served. They had inherited a hidebound, antique machine. To make it work they had to be highly effective in the real world of power and personalities which ran national life – but they also had to be sensitive to the hothouse family politics of the royal world. It was sometimes an impossible job. Failure was always headline news and any success had to be passed modestly upwards.

In a minority of cases, however, it was painfully apparent that the only journey some had taken to be reborn as courtiers was the short march from Wellington Barracks to Buckingham Palace. Their tone and style of working were therefore vaguely familiar to anyone who had ever humoured an unstable commanding officer or in turn meted out patronizing encouragement to a subordinate. My first ‘chat’ was with a prime specimen of this type. Order, precedent and self-preservation were everything to him, which left little room, I observed, for intellect. It became apparent quite early in our conversation that it also left little room for humour, insight, empathy or outside interests of any kind. These were optional in his post and, I suspected, in his world.

He clearly had a dilemma. His self-appointed task was to brief junior new arrivals such as myself about aspects of life at court. Under this heading he included the history of the British monarchy (a bizarre account of his own making), its relevance to modern Britain (akin to his own), and how an insect such as I should hold his knife and fork (an exaggeration, but only just). This performance may have been for our benefit but it was undoubtedly also for his own, since it gave us newcomers a wonderful opportunity to marvel at his mastery of arcane and irrelevant information. However, he plainly suffered doubts as to whether we were suitable receptacles for such priceless wisdom. I fear I did little to set his mind at rest, either then or in our subsequent uneasy encounters.

‘Above all,’ he said, leaning forward for emphasis and fixing me with a watery glare, ‘we don’t want any nonsenses! Nonsenses always lead to nausea!’ He sat back, obviously feeling that no further explanation was required. There was a pause, presumably to allow me to dwell on my capacity for nonsenses. It seemed infinite to both of us.

‘Thank you,’ I said, already aware that hollow pleasantries would be a necessity of life in this place. Then, seeing an opportunity, I added, ‘I really should be getting back …’

He took this news quite well, despite the fact that he had barely warmed to his theme. He left me feeling that I was but a passing aberration on the seamless splendour of royal existence. That may have been quite true, but it did not stop me outlasting him by many years.

Looking back, I now know that he was an exception to the general rule about the Queen’s advisers who, almost to a man, I found to embody the qualities for which I unkindly judged this particular individual had no excess cranial capacity. At the time, however, I thought him a caricature and a good example of a species on the edge of extinction – which, incidentally, is where it remains.

My next encounter was with a representative of the newer generation. Back at St James’s, I had time for a chipped mug of weak tea before the next stage of my indoctrination. I knew instinctively that I was about to learn matters of real relevance from an instructor who would closely monitor my performance, or lack of it. She would become one of the two most important women in my working life: the lady-in-waiting and assistant private secretary to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith.

Anne had been with the Princess from the start. In a world built on precedent, she had created most of the procedures and conventions by which even our little office needed to function. She set an example of dignity and common sense which belied our subordinate status. Later I discovered that she was also a lot of fun. But on day one I recognized her as a formidable ambassador for her mistress, unlikely to be tolerant of any backsliding on my part.

Her office was the most attractive in St James’s. Formerly a royal dressing room (when our quarters had been a royal residence), it retained an air of domesticity enhanced by Anne’s tasteful choice of decor. A wide bay window looked down into Ambassador’s Court, offering an ideal vantage point from which to observe the daily traffic of the Palace’s visitors and occupants. To me it seemed like a boudoir crossed with a throne room, an impression reinforced as I approached the desk behind which Anne presided with a magisterial presence.

She was just one of many courtiers who had a difficult decision to make when faced with a new recruit such as myself: How much do we tell him? For the next half hour I listened attentively to Anne’s introduction to the workings of the Princess’s office, and although this was accurate and informative, it left me still largely ignorant about the most important factor of all, namely what went on in the mind of the Princess. By what Anne left out on this subject I drew a generally accurate conclusion about Palace life – admit nothing to anyone, especially if they are new. Let them find out for themselves, the hard way.

In obedience to this principle Anne stuck to what I naively thought were trivia. She explained my responsibility to look after the ladies-in-waiting who would accompany the Princess on all her official engagements. ‘You must make sure they have their programme and briefing notes at least a week before each engagement,’ she told me, rather optimistically as it turned out. ‘And you must help them out whenever they need helping out.’

Out of what? I wondered. Cars? Lifts? In fact it was both, among many other things, including that state of Siberian ostracism to which our mistress occasionally committed all who served her closely. Anne, of course, knew that such unwelcome experiences of ‘helping out’ would come my way soon enough. How I dealt with them would be an interesting test for me which I could be sure would be closely monitored.

Anne had been in the Wales business quite long enough to know that the marriage was now largely a sham. Thanks to tabloid coverage of separate sleeping arrangements on the recent German tour, almost anyone else could now come to the same conclusion. She knew also that this created powerful forces that could blow apart the image of normality that we existed to protect. There would be untold consequences, not least for the constitution, and never far from her thoughts was the potential effect on Princes William and Harry. Nothing was said about any of this in that first meeting.

In the Navy I had been used to living by the ‘need to know’ principle. It was elementary security practice to restrict sensitive information just to those personnel who needed it to carry out their tasks. A rather haphazard version of this operated at the Palace. Those who knew the fractured state of the Waleses’ marriage were like members of a secret society, bound by loyalty to their employers. Membership was not to be granted lightly to the new temporary equerry. For one thing, he may be out on his ear next week if he fouls up, and for another, the more people we tell, the more difficult it is to pretend that things might yet get better.

So I had to find out for myself, which I did, but only detail by painful detail over a long period of time. By then I had some sympathy for the hidebound old guard. How much more reassuring simply to lecture the new boys on regimental history and mess rules.

In a conscious effort to break this understandable but counter-productive culture of secrecy, I tried to be more open when it was my turn to break the bad news to new staff. Apart from courtesy, there was a more practical reason: such coyness bred an atmosphere of unreality and suspicion which did nothing for efficiency or morale.

In its more absurd forms it saw courtiers at lunch disdainful of discussing royal revelations already splashed on the morning’s front pages. Sometimes I knew these revelations had been planted by royal leak; in fact, by my revered and respected boss, as when – some years later – she was notoriously photographed making a secret rendezvous with the Daily Mail’s court correspondent Richard Kay. Then it felt as if the world had turned upside down.

When I first realized that such things were possible, initially I felt as though I had entered a devastated landscape from which all signposts and familiar paths had been obliterated. Somewhere I knew civilization continued, the familiar routines of Palace life carried on regardless. Footmen brought tea to comfortable offices in which comfortable officials happily scanned guest lists for garden parties; in the mews contented horses were eating hay; in the Throne Room a smiling Queen received Ambassadors. Yet the whole facade of traditional royal management could be overturned by one phone call to a journalist from a young woman who happened to be married to the Prince of Wales. It made a mockery of the established order under which, if such dirty work needed doing, then a host of officials or ‘friends’ would jump to the task. It was shocking to the royal establishment (but curiously refreshing too) that the Princess was prepared to commit such sins unblushingly and by herself.

I left Anne’s office deep in thought. I was happy to leave premonitions to my more spiritually inquisitive employer, but the sense that events were not entirely under control was real enough. Nothing specific had been said, but it did not need to be. The instinctive reluctance to talk even discreetly about calamitous stories blaring daily from the headlines told its own story: we would bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.

Much of the lunchtime euphoria had left me and I was again conscious of the mountain I had to climb if I was going to fit into my new world, let alone be a success in it. My gloom deepened as I returned to the alien bustle of the equerries’ office. On my learner’s desk I could see the note I had sent to KP in the Bag that morning, promptly returned as Jo had predicted.

Despite my best efforts, the paper trembled slightly in my fingers as I searched for the teacher’s comments on my first piece of prep. The sprawling, girlish script that I came to know well spelt out just one word – ‘Perfect’. There was an exclamation mark too. I breathed again.

‘Beginner’s luck,’ said Jo’s voice behind me.

I was half expecting the Princess to turn up at St James’s, but she did not. Nor did she phone me. I was not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. I knew my Palace life would not really have begun until I spoke to her in my own right, rather than just as a job-hunter.

I went home late that night. As I passed KPI looked up the long drive and wondered what was going on behind the lighted windows. It looked cosy enough, but I remembered the Princess’s forced laughter and her clumsy jokes about her in-laws. It did not take a psychologist to see there was a great tension just below the surface.

Her popularity clearly gave her enormous power – I had felt it very strongly when I met her. But, like a toppled pyramid, it seemed an immense weight to rest on just her slim shoulders. Were others helping her carry that weight? Would I?

I already knew the answer to the second question. Even at this early stage I felt a loyalty to the Princess. For all her professional competence and innate nobility, there was an indefinable vulnerability about her that drew from me an unprompted wish to protect her. This developed into a complex mixture of duty and devotion which sometimes took more and sometimes less than the strict professional loyalty required, but which has never entirely disappeared.

As for the first question, I already had the glimmerings of an answer to that too. My observations at lunch in Buckingham Palace had given me a clue. If I felt that I, a junior minion in a junior household, was just tolerated by the old guard, how much more was that true of my boss. If I looked up from my own small patch of red carpet, I could see my experience reflected in that of the Princess, although hers was on a scale as different from mine as a lifetime is from a two-year secondment. Inside the organization of which she was a senior, popular and accomplished partner, she was just tolerated.

Being tolerated was fine, I supposed, but I had expected a degree of supervision, if not actual direction. At times I came to feel that even a measure of interest would have been welcome. Raised in disciplined organizations, I was surprised to discover the extent of the autonomy given to the junior households. Some form of structured, central co-ordination was the Philosopher’s Stone of royal strategic management and endless attempts were – and are – made to discover it. But even the sharpest sorcerer on the PR market is unlikely to work the magic for long. The base material of his potion is a thousand years of royal durability. It is hard, dull and unyielding, not readily open to transformation. It is strong too – but its strength is not the kind you would want to cuddle up to. The best he can hope to create is media gold – a fool’s delight.

Later, as events in the Waleses’ marriage moved from concern to crisis, tolerance became pained aloofness in some cases and outright distaste in others. In the end, however, it was the indifference that caused such harm. Opportunities to alter the downward spiral of events were squandered. Those who could have helped preferred too often to look away or distract themselves with the accustomed routines that had proved an effective bulwark against intrusive reality in the past. I knew and understood why. The need to confront unfamiliar and painfully intimate issues was deeply unwelcome to us courtiers as a class. What I resentfully saw as indifference I eventually realized often masked a genuine concern – and an equally genuine sense of complete impotence in the face of events that constantly defied the rules of familiar experience.

Part of what drove the Princess on to endure and exploit her public duties was her wish to earn the active recognition and approval of the family into which she had married. Sometimes with bitterness, but increasingly with a resigned acceptance, she complained to me that nobody ever told her she was doing a good job.

Oh, the papers praised her to the heavens, but they could knock her down again the next day. The public adored her, but theirs – she thought – was a fickle love, lavished on her hairdo as much as on her soul. In any case, she left it behind with the slam of her car door. Her staff could try to redress the balance, but the line between true praise and toadying was always perilously fine.

It was a cruel irony that the better she did her job, the more she felt resented by some of her in-laws, unable to stomach the idea that she was a channel for emotions they struggled to feel, let alone express. Very well: if she could not please them, she would please herself. Little wonder, then, that she grew to prefer working for her own benefit and, as she saw them, the emotional needs of humanity at large. It might be selfish and it lacked intellectual discipline. It could – and did – expose her to criticism from agents of an older royal order, fearful of the public sentiment (or sentimentality, in their eyes) which she increasingly stirred up. But better that, she thought – even unconsciously – than deny her need for a recognition that accepted her as she really was.

The liberal, compassionate and educated people who are the emerging face of royal authority might at this point feel entitled to a flicker of exasperation. ‘We did everything we could, but she was impossible!’

I can only reply, ‘Yes, you did. And yes, she was.’ But too many people who could have put things right did too little for too long. I will always believe it to be true: the Princess of Wales did not set out to rebel. What in the end was seen as her disaffection was what she did to compensate for a chronic feeling of rejection. Time and again, a small handful of sugarlumps would have been enough to lead this nervous thoroughbred back into the safety of the show ring. When none could be found for her, she set off into the crowd.

The organization I joined in 1988 nonetheless seemed, at least on the surface, to be united in its common aim of serving the Prince and Princess, both of whom for their part seemed equally united in keeping away from public gaze whatever private difficulties their marriage might have been experiencing. Even those well acquainted with the rumours, such as Georgina Howell, writing in the Sunday Times on 18 September 1988, could still reassure themselves that ‘Diana [has decided] as royal women so often have … to make the best of a cool marriage instead of fighting it.’ Ominously she added, ‘… but she lacks romance. The danger is that she may find it.’ Given what was later disclosed to Andrew Morton about the Princess’s love life at the time, this understatement is touching in its innocence. Captain Hewitt had already been on the scene for some time, carrying his own supply of romantic sugarlumps – and self-denial was never her strong point.

That first night, as I inched past the gates of KP in the London traffic, such thoughts were the merest inkling, easily pushed to the back of my mind. In the years that followed, however, they grew from idle speculation to grim reality.

Had I known it, the signs were all there from the beginning.

Shadows of a Princess

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