Читать книгу Charles: Victim or villain? - Penny Junor - Страница 7

‘They tell me there’s been an accident. What’s going on?’ Charles in the early hours of 31 August 1997

The first call alerting the Royal Family to Diana’s accident came through to Sir Robin Janvrin, the Queen’s deputy private secretary, at one o’clock on the morning of Sunday 31 August. He was asleep in his house on the Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire. It was from the British ambassador in Paris, who had only sketchy news. There had been a car crash. Dodi Fayed, it seemed, had been killed, although there was no confirmation yet. The Princess of Wales, who had been travelling with him, was injured but no one knew how badly. Their car had smashed into the support pillars of a tunnel under the Seine. It had been travelling at high speed while trying to escape a group of paparazzi in hot pursuit on motorbikes.

Janvrin immediately telephoned the Queen and the Prince of Wales in their rooms at the castle. He then telephoned the Prince’s assistant private secretary, Nick Archer, who was staying in another house on the estate; also the Queen’s equerry and protection officers. They all agreed to meet in the offices at the castle, where they set up an operations room and manned the phones throughout the night.

Meanwhile, in London, the Prince’s team were being woken and told the news, ironically, by the tabloid press. The first call to Mark Bolland, the Prince’s deputy private secretary, came at 1 a.m. from the News of the World. Having gone to bed at his flat in the City after a very good dinner party, he let the answering machine take the call, and when he heard something about an accident in Paris dismissed it as the usual Saturday night fantasy. It was not until he heard the voice of Stuart Higgins, then editor of the Sun, a paper not published on a Sunday, speaking into the machine ten minutes later, that he realised something very odd was going on and picked up the phone. Higgins had much the same news as the Embassy. The reports were conflicting but it sounded as though Dodi had been killed and Diana injured.

The Prince’s press secretary, Sandy Henney, had also just gone to bed at her home in Surrey, having seen the last guest out after a fortieth birthday party for her sister-in-law. She too was woken by a journalist with a very similar story. The media, getting news directly from the emergency services, were in many ways better informed than the Embassy that night and provided a real service to the Prince’s staff.

Mark Bolland immediately rang Stephen Lamport, the Prince’s private secretary, at his home in west London, then Sandy Henney, and within minutes the phone lines across the capital and between London and Scotland were buzzing.

The Prince telephoned Bolland in London. ‘Robin tells me there’s been an accident. What’s going on?’

He wanted details. Shocked and unable to believe what he was hearing, he asked the same questions over and over again: What had caused the accident? What had Diana been doing in that situation? Who was driving? Where had it happened? Why had it happened? Questions to which, for the time being, there were no answers. They spoke for almost an hour.

There was no more concrete news. Reports one minute said Diana was seriously hurt, and the next suggested she had walked away with superficial injuries.

The Queen was also awake in her suite of rooms next door to her son’s on the first floor of the castle. Her private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, was on holiday in Norfolk, but like the Prince’s staff her own people were in constant touch with one another. The Prince’s private secretary on duty in Scotland was Nick Archer, but it was Stephen Lamport and Mark Bolland in London who were calling the shots.

Bolland telephoned Robin Janvrin to tell him that the Prince would be flying to Paris later that day to visit Diana in hospital, and needed a plane. ‘He’s going,’ he said. ‘This is not a matter for discussion. He is going to see his ex-wife.’

His request did not go down well initially. Was it the right thing to do? wondered Janvrin. An aeroplane of the Queen’s Flight couldn’t be ordered without the Queen’s specific agreement, and that was unlikely to be forthcoming.

‘Okay, fine,’ said Bolland. ‘We’ll take a scheduled flight from Aberdeen.’ The Queen would be irritated, no doubt, that yet again Diana was disrupting everyone’s lives. She had lost patience with Diana long ago, and as the week wore on she was confirmed in her belief that everything to do with her former daughter-in-law was always extraordinarily complicated.

Unbelievably, although the Queen and Prince Charles were just feet away from one another in their separate rooms, divided by paper-thin walls, it was their staff who were discussing the rights and wrongs of asking the Queen’s permission for Charles to use her aeroplane. Never was the true nature of this mother–son relationship more starkly demonstrated. Closely knit though the family appears, there is very little real communication between them. The Prince loves his parents dearly but they don’t talk. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had not known quite how serious the problems with their son’s marriage had been until 1987, when two friends wrote to the Queen, having decided independently and simultaneously that she ought to know what was going on. Their letters landed on her desk on the same day. They had witnessed some odd incidents, like Diana falling down the stairs at Sandringham, and Diana had told them on one occasion that her life with the Prince was impossible because of Mrs Parker Bowles, but they had not discussed the problems with their son.

That Sunday, Charles, William and Harry had all been planning to fly to London. The boys’ summer holiday was almost over and they were due to meet up with their mother, who was flying back from Paris. Diana always had the children for the last few days before they went back to school at the start of a new term, so that she could get everything ready and make sure they had the right kit. The Prince would spend a few days at Highgrove, his home in Gloucestershire, before heading for Provence, in the South of France, his habitual haunt in early September.

The Prince was in no doubt that he wanted to go and see Diana in Paris that morning, but uncertain whether he should take the children. He was worried that her injuries would be too upsetting for them. Clearly no decision could be made until they knew how bad her injuries were. And as the hours crept painfully past, he talked about the Princess, whom he still loved and prayed for every night, despite the failure of their marriage, despite the hurt that had existed between them.

‘I always thought it would end like this,’ he said, ‘with me having to nurse Diana through some terrible injury or illness. I always thought she’d come back to me and I would spend the rest of my time looking after her.’

The walls in Balmoral are so thin that there is no keeping of secrets. One regular visitor says that if you want to have a private conversation you have to put the plug in the wash basin and talk quietly, or it will be all round the castle. Inevitably, with this kind of drama going on, most of the family were by now awake and watching the television or listening to the radio, which was already given over to news of the accident. The Duke of York was staying in the castle at the time, also Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips, then aged nineteen, two friends of the Queen and Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister. William and Harry were asleep and it became a priority to get their radios out of their bedrooms and the television out of the nursery, to prevent them waking up and switching one of them on.

At about 3.30 a.m., Mark Bolland rang Robin Janvrin again to find out how he was doing with the plane, and whether he had woken up the people at RAF Northolt, in Greater London, where it was based. In the middle of the conversation, at 3.45, they were interrupted by a telephone call that came through from the Embassy in Paris for Janvrin, and he put Bolland on to Nick Archer while he took the call.

‘We can’t muck about with his plane,’ Bolland was saying. ‘Make sure Robin is quite clear what is going to happen …’

‘Oh, Mark, I think we’re going to have a change of plan.’

In the background Archer could hear Robin Janvrin breaking the news to the Prince of Wales on the telephone. ‘Sir, I’m very sorry to have to tell you, I’ve just had the Ambassador on the phone. The Princess died a short time ago.’

The announcement that went out at 4.30 a.m. said she had died at four o’clock. It had actually been earlier.

The Prince immediately rang Mark. ‘Robin has just told me she’s dead, Mark, is this true? What happened? What on earth was she doing there? How could this have happened? They’re all going to blame me, aren’t they? What do I do? What does this mean?’

Mark’s first reaction was to ring Camilla Parker Bowles to tell her that Diana had died, and warn her that she could expect a call at any moment from the Prince, in a state of serious distress. He had rung a number of close friends that night, and Camilla and the Prince had already spoken several times. She was shocked to the core by the news that Diana was dead, and utterly devastated for the boys; also terrified for the Prince, of what would happen to him, what people’s reaction would be.

Diana’s death came as a terrible shock to everyone. All the news had indicated that she had survived the crash, and with some reports having suggested she had walked away from the car, people were totally unprepared. The truth was that she had sustained terrible chest and head injuries. She had lost consciousness very soon after the impact, and never regained it. She had been treated in the wreckage of the Mercedes at the scene for about an hour and was then taken to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital four miles away, where surgeons had fought for a further two hours to save her life, but in vain. The reaction was total horror and disbelief.

The Prince’s first thought was for the children. Should he wake them and tell them or let them sleep and tell them in the morning? He was absolutely dreading it, and didn’t know what to do for the best. The Queen felt strongly that they should be left to sleep and he took her advice and didn’t wake them up until 7.15. William had had a difficult night’s sleep and had woken many times. He had known, he said, that something awful was going to happen.

The Prince, like Camilla, realised only too well what the public reaction might be, and what the media would say. ‘They’re all going to blame me,’ he said. ‘The world’s going to go completely mad, isn’t it? We’re going to see a reaction that we’ve never seen before. And it could destroy everything. It could destroy the monarchy.’

‘Yes, sir, I think it could,’ said Lamport with brutal honesty. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for your mother, sir. She’s going to have to do things she may not want to do, or feel comfortable doing, but if she doesn’t do them, then that’s the end of it.’

The Queen’s first difficulty was upon her before dawn had broken. The Prince decided he should be the one to go to Paris to collect Diana’s body, but the Queen was against the idea and was strongly supported by her private secretary. The Princess was no longer a member of the Royal Family, argued Sir Robert Fellowes; it would be wrong to make too much fuss.

Robin Janvrin came up with the remark that clinched it. ‘What would you rather, Ma’am,’ he said; ‘that she came back in a Harrods’ van?’ There was no further argument.

Diana’s love affair with Dodi Fayed had been a source of deep concern to everyone at court, not least the Prince of Wales. Not because he resented her happiness – it was his deepest wish that Diana would find happiness – but because he feared it would end in disaster. He feared that Diana was in danger of being used by the al Fayed publicity machine. Dodi’s father, Mohamed al Fayed, the high-profile Egyptian owner of Harrods, was a controversial figure. Long denied British citizenship, he had tried relentlessly to ingratiate himself with the establishment. He had done some inspired matchmaking that summer between his playboy son and the Princess of Wales in the South of France, and had milked it for all it was worth. He had scarcely been out of the news for a month: he had been photographed with William and Harry, the Queen’s grandsons, who had been his guests on board his yacht, and was hoping for the greatest coup of all, to secure the mother of a future king of England as a daughter-in-law.

Dodi was a serious member of the international jet set, a kind and gentle man, but with more money than intellect, and a string of conquests to his name amongst the world’s most beautiful women. While he was busy wooing Diana, another woman thought she was engaged to marry him. He dabbled in the film business, but was essentially financed by his rich father, who denied him nothing. Dodi and Diana did appear to be in love, and may well have gone on to marry had things turned out differently. She would have been the biggest catch in the world for him. He would have provided the wealth she needed, even after her divorce settlement, to finance her enormously expensive lifestyle, and it would have been the ultimate two-fingered gesture to the Royal Family she so despised.

The boys had not enjoyed their holiday on board al Fayed’s yacht. They had not taken to Dodi or his father and had hated the publicity – as a result William had had a terrible row with his mother – and the whole trip had been extremely uncomfortable. And to add insult to injury, at the end of their stay, their two royal protection officers were taken aside by a Fayed aide, and handed a brown envelope each, stuffed with notes. ‘Mr al Fayed would like to thank you for all you have done,’ he said. In a panic, they immediately telephoned Colin Trimming, the Prince’s detective and head of the royal protection squad, and told him what had happened. ‘You’ve got to give it back,’ he said.

‘We’ve tried,’ they said, ‘but we were told that Mr al Fayed would be very upset if we didn’t accept it.’ The money went back.

The mention of Harrods to the Queen was enough to trigger Operation Overlord – the plan, which had been in existence for many years but never previously needed, to return the body of a member of the Royal Family to London. There is a BAe146 plane ear-marked for the purpose, which can be airborne at short notice from RAF Northolt. It had always been thought the Queen Mother might be its first passenger, which given she was then ninety-seven years old was not unreasonable. No one in their wildest dreams could have guessed it would be used for Diana, still so young and beautiful, super-fit and brimming with health and vitality.

The plane left Northolt at 10 a.m. that Sunday morning, bound for Aberdeen, with Stephen Lamport, Mark Bolland and Sandy Henney on board. First stop was RAF Wittering in Rutland, where it collected Diana’s sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who lived nearby, and Lady Jane Fellowes. It was Robert Fellowes who had broken the news to Diana’s family, and the Prince had telephoned Sarah to suggest they might like to go with him to collect the body, whereupon Jane had driven up from Norfolk to join her sister. From Wittering they flew to Aberdeen, where they collected the Prince of Wales, and then on to Paris. The Prince had decided this was not a trip for the children and so they stayed at Balmoral with Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who, as the Queen said, ‘by the grace of God’ had just arrived in Scotland ready to take the Princes down to London to meet their mother. She and their cousin Peter Phillips were utterly brilliant with William and Harry that day and for the remainder of the week.

Diana’s sisters spent most of the flight to Paris in tears. The Prince was controlled but clearly very shaken. Stephen Lamport took everyone through what would happen at the other end. There was a possibility, he warned Sarah and Jane, that Mohamed al Fayed might be at the hospital and if he was the Prince would have to speak to him; how did they feel about that? Both sisters were adamant they wanted nothing to do with Mr al Fayed; they didn’t even want to see him.

In the event he wasn’t there. By the time the Prince’s party arrived al Fayed had already taken his son’s body home for prayers in Regent’s Park Mosque, followed by a Muslim burial that night at a cemetery in Woking, Surrey. On arrival at the hospital the Prince was met by President Chirac, who had come in person to express his nation’s great sadness at the death of the Princess.

With protocol observed, the Prince and the two sisters were taken to see Diana’s body. A doctor accompanied them into the small room on the first floor of the hospital, as well as a priest, whom they had specifically asked for. It was a distressing sight for which none of them was adequately prepared. Diana’s body was laid out in a coffin which had been flown to Paris earlier that morning on a Hercules from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Levertons, the north London family firm of undertakers, were an integral part of Operation Overlord. The Princess had been embalmed and was wearing a dress that her butler, Paul Burrell, had flown out with earlier, but the body that lay so still and cold and empty looked nothing like the Diana they had known. Her head had been badly damaged in the crash and her face was distorted. The Prince told Diana’s sisters how glad he was that he had not taken William and Harry to Paris with him. It would have been much too distressing for them.

They stayed with Diana’s body for seven minutes. Sarah and Jane were sobbing helplessly when they left and were taken to a room for some privacy while they recovered. The Prince was not crying when he came back into the corridor, but it was obvious that he had been, and was visibly very distressed. His eyes were quite red, his face racked with pain. A small crowd was waiting in the corridor, most of them hospital staff, and also a number of men in dark suits. The Prince came out of the door, stopped, closed his eyes and bit his lip. Then after a moment’s pause, while he fought to regain his composure, he set off down the corridor, a private man no longer, to shake hands with the doctors and nurses and thank them for all they had done. As someone watching remarked, ‘He went from human being to Windsor’ – as nearly fifty years of training ensured he would. Duty above all else. When he heard that the parents of the Welsh bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, employed by the al Fayeds, who had been the sole survivor in the accident, were at the hospital, he immediately said he must talk to them.

Moments later the coffin, by now closed and draped with the maroon and yellow of the Royal Standard, was carried out of the room. It was suddenly obvious that the men in dark suits were the undertakers, and without a word needing to be said, everyone in the corridor spontaneously formed two lines and silently bowed their heads as the coffin passed between them and down the stairs into a waiting Renault Espace.

There were thousands of people in the streets outside. The whole of Paris seemed to know who was in the Espace and what was going on. To a man, woman and child they were silent. As the motorcade made its way slowly through the city and out on to the périphérique towards the airport, the people on the pavements bowed their heads in silence, people in street cafés stood up as the cars passed, each one flanked by two large motorbikes on either side, and no one made a sound. The Prince was deeply moved, and in the silence that enveloped the aircraft on the flight home, with everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts and emotions, he said, ‘Wasn’t it wonderful that everybody stood up.’

But if the tribute paid to Diana by the Parisians had been moving, the arrangements that had been made unbeknownst to him for the next stage of her journey enraged him. While Sarah and Jane disappeared into another part of the cabin to have a cigarette, the Prince asked what arrangements had been made after they touched down at Northolt. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would be there, he knew, also the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Airlie, who is the most senior member of the Queen’s household. He wanted to know how many RAF people would be there to carry the coffin, whether the flowers he had said he wanted had been sorted out, whether there would be a proper hearse to carry the coffin, and where they were planning to take Diana’s body. The answer to that final question was the mortuary in Fulham, commonly used by the Royal Coroner.

‘Who decided that? Nobody asked me. Diana is going to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. Sort it. I don’t care who has made this decision. She is going to the Chapel Royal.’

Sandy Henney spent much of the remainder of the flight on the plane’s telephone ensuring that the Prince’s instructions were carried out to the last detail.

The decision had almost certainly been made by Robert Fellowes, doing what he imagined the Queen would have wanted, without actually asking her, but his second guessing was not far off the mark. There is no doubt that in the course of the days leading up to Diana’s funeral, the hostility that both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had felt towards their erstwhile daughter-in-law came dangerously close to the surface on several occasions. She had caused nothing but trouble and embarrassment over the years, and here she was, in death, still managing to cause mayhem.

The Prince’s relationship with Diana had been turbulent and troubled and they were no longer man and wife, but Diana was still the mother of his children and, in a way, he still loved her. He wanted her treated with the dignity she deserved. After Sandy’s hasty and heated phone calls from the plane, the plan about the mortuary was changed and it was agreed that the Princess of Wales would be taken to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, just yards from the office they shared so disastrously until their divorce. She was also to have outriders. And while he was at it, her sisters Sarah and Jane were to be given a plane to take them wherever they wanted to go, and if they wanted to go with the body into London first, then so be it. So at the Prince’s bidding, the plane which had brought the Prime Minister from his constituency to Northolt to meet the returning party was kept on hold, but in the end was not required. The sisters accompanied the body into London and chose to make their own ways home.

The plane carrying the coffin touched down at Northolt and taxied out of sight of the reception party, where it came to a halt. One of the crew climbed out and opened up the cargo hatch, and the group onboard listened in silence to the bolts holding the coffin in place being loosened beneath them. The plane then taxied on and came to a halt in front of the airport building where Tony Blair, David Airlie and 150 or so photographers and pressmen were waiting quietly on the tarmac. In silence the coffin was unloaded and carried to the waiting hearse. The only sound to be heard was the Royal Standard flapping in the breeze.

Wrapped in thought, his emotions in turmoil, the Prince of Wales climbed back aboard the aircraft, accompanied by Stephen Lamport, to fly back to Balmoral and be with his grieving sons, while the hearse made its way slowly down the A40 into west London.

It was only then that the real enormity of what had happened began to dawn on the Palace staff. The motorway, the bridges and embankments – and when they ran out, the roads and pavements – were full of cars and people who had come to watch and weep as Diana’s coffin passed by. Tributes had started pouring in from all over the world, and flowers were being laid at the gate of every building with which Diana was associated.

This, they realised, was going to be unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.