DIANA STOOD ON the threshold of a new life, a new world and she had no intention of letting the rich, fresh earth give way beneath her feet There was no one upon whom she could rely to give her the advice she needed. She had never wanted anything more in her life than she now wanted Charles, but not for a fling, or an affair: it had to be marriage. However much she had criticized Raine, Diana had been a first-hand observer of her deliberate, successful campaign to get Johnnie to propose. She may not have liked Raine, but she admired her strength of purpose, her ability to get what she wanted and, amazingly, remain feminine and seductive.
The one flaw in Raine’s crusade was the fairly public knowledge that beneath her soft, womanly curves and doting manner she was made of tempered steel guaranteed to survive, and could twist to her advantage anything that stood in the path of her achieving her goal. Diana, on the other hand, had a most deceptive persona. People thought of her as guileless, vulnerable, naïve. That was what Camilla and Kanga supposed and Charles believed. What Charles and his camp-followers did not see was the quiet desperation that had always undermined Diana’s life, the gnawing need for love and attention, and the determined belief that she would succeed where Sarah had failed and marry Charles. That was the sort of thing that happened in the book of fairytales given to her so long ago by Grandmother Spencer: always the unfortunate young woman, the one least likely to appear to others as a princess, would win the prince’s hand in marriage, and always she was a young woman with secret charms and innate goodness that the prince recognized where others did not. Diana saw herself in that light and created herself in that image.
The best fiction is often how we interpret our own lives and what we see as our common due. It is created usually as a means of avoiding reality which, if seriously considered, might negate our ability to strive for what might seem the impossible. Diana believed herself to be less bright than Jane, less talented than Sarah, less important than Charlie. In the mirror she saw a too-tall, somewhat plump girl, whose parents expected little of her in personal achievement. In any case, she was a Spencer: that was her greatest asset; she also had good breeding, impeccable manners, and although she was not really beautiful, she was certainly attractive when “done up.” All those qualities would be an advantage in her making a good match. Prince Andrew had been the height of Lady Fermoy’s ambitions for Diana, but he had matured too wild and raunchy to be a suitable husband for her less adventurous, youngest Spencer granddaughter.
Diana knew nothing of life outside the archaic society into which she was born. Her schooldays had been spent with others from that same world. When she worked as a cleaner it was for Sarah and her friends. She went to a cooking school that taught débutantes with nothing else to do, tended the children of family friends in grand houses and was never treated as hired help.
She felt a deep loneliness and a sense of disconnection so extreme it verged on dread. She yearned for warmth, a sense of belonging, a feeling that she was someone. She believed these needs would be satisfied only in the protective arms of the right man. That man, she thought, was the Prince of Wales. What had begun as a fiction of the mind now became an endeavour of will.
Lady Fermoy, although confused at Charles’s sudden interest in her granddaughter (“She does seem rather young and unaccomplished to warrant the Prince of Wales’s attention,” she told a confidante), wasted little time in promoting her granddaughter’s cause. Lady Fermoy was wise in the ways of the court: she had had the Queen Mother’s confidence for years; she knew Camilla was Charles’s mistress but kept her silence lest Diana was frightened off.
Charles had a standing arrangement to see his grandmother, usually for tea, once a week. He adored the Queen Mother and particularly liked hearing her stories of past times. She was a fount of family history—not so much what had been recorded but what she had actually witnessed. She recalled with bitterness all the problems that had ensued over Edward VIII’s affair with Mrs. Simpson and urged Charles to find an acceptable wife quickly.
“The Queen Mother’s fear,” one courtier says, “was that Camilla might divorce Parker Bowles and Charles decide to marry her, which would have been a ghastly replay of the Edward-Wallis débâcle, and could have ended with Andrew as heir to the throne. She had little confidence in Andrew’s ability at this time or of the public’s acceptance of a situation so similar to that in the past.”
In a discussion with the Queen Mother about Charles and his over-long bachelor status, Lady Fermoy gracefully suggested what a fine young woman Diana was—trustworthy, pure, no gossip, adored children and was so pleasant. She added what a lovely couple they made and how in harmony they seemed. The Queen Mother listened, and the next time she saw Charles she repeated what she had heard about Diana. Charles, who greatly respected his grandmother, was now almost convinced that Camilla and Kanga had been right, but was still far from ready for commitment He certainly found Diana attractive, but he was not in love with her.
Duty had been drummed into Charles since infancy, and his duty now was to get married and produce an heir. Duty meant that should Camilla divorce Parker Bowles, Charles still could not marry her. He was the Prince of Wales and materially had almost anything he could wish for, but he did not have freedom of choice. That was the price he had to pay for his status, and he had come to a point in his life when he was willing to compromise. If not Camilla, than why not the jolly, bouncy Diana, untouched and unsophisticated? She was a Spencer and her family had been trusted courtiers for centuries. It was also obvious to him that Diana was in love with him.
Still, Charles was not sure. “He was afraid he would be unable to face a future without Camilla,” a courtier confided. “Before he could even consider proposing marriage to Diana, he had to be sure that Camilla would not desert him.”
What Charles had missed was Diana’s uncompromising romanticism and her strength of character. She possessed a strong, inner spirit, an “I’ll show you!” attitude born of the knowledge that she had been unwanted as a baby, that she had failed at almost everything she had attempted so far, that no one gave her credit for having a brain. She kept it all so well hidden beneath her “bouncy” exterior that Camilla, Kanga and Charles were misled.
However, at a luncheon around this time, Barbara Cartland declared to a table partner, “Diana is not shy. She tends to look down and bend over, but she does that because she’s so tall. It’s nothing to do with shyness. She has a distinct personality, and is not a person, whether she speaks or not, who can be ignored.”
Certainly the press did not ignore Diana. The photos of her and Charles taken by the Dee at Balmoral appeared in the papers before her return to London, and when she arrived back at her flat her entrance was blocked by a corps of newsmen and photographers. They stuck cameras in her face and asked bold questions: “Are you in love with the Prince? Is the Prince in love with you?”
She kept her eyes down and said nothing.
Charles telephoned her and they made plans for her to come to Highgrove that weekend. He suggested that to foil the press she should drive herself to Camilla’s home from which someone would bring her the rest of the way. Then he spoke of how terrible the past week had been for Camilla, three or four newsmen outside her door, expecting her to have some news they could wangle from her. Ghastly. Poor Camilla.
That should have alerted Diana to trouble ahead. Why poor Camilla? She had far more reporters at her door, she was the one who was being followed, had cameras and microphones thrust in her face, and her car blocked. Her telephone rang incessantly and had to be answered by one of her flatmates: “No comment. Sorry.” Yet Diana remained uncomplaining to Charles, for fear of rocking the boat.
Charles’s valet, Stephen Barry, said later that Diana went after Charles with “single-minded determination. In all my years, I’ve never seen anyone as tricky or as determined as she was.” Ironically, in this she was placing herself exactly where Charles, Camilla and Kanga wanted her. Even her demeanour with the press was spot on. She was well mannered, vulnerable and winning their sympathy at the same time as she derided their obtrusive behaviour. And she was drawing public interest and admiration.
Never had one of Prince Charles’s romances garnered quite as much press attention. The public took to Diana instantly and newspaper sales soared. Unlike the sophisticated social butterflies and publicity-loving actresses Charles had previously romanced, Diana’s public image was that of an ingenuous teenager, a nursery teacher, a working girl. She was someone with whom her peers, their mothers, fathers and grandparents could identify.
Diana was being driven by instinct as well as intellect. Truman Capote once wrote, “The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love having no geography knows no boundaries.” And there was no doubt that Diana was in love and that as this was the first time, she was in uncharted country.
The romance progressed through secret meetings. Once, when Diana and Charles were going to spend the weekend at the Mountbatten estate, Broadlands, she tied sheets together in her flat and, holding her suitcase, slid down the makeshift rope from a rear window to the deserted alley, walked a block, hailed a taxi then telephoned one of her flatmates to bring her car to her, avoiding the press men. “I was constantly polite, constantly civil. I was never rude. I never shouted,” Diana recalled. “I cried like a baby to the four walls. I just couldn’t cope with it I cried because I got no support from Charles and no support from the Palace press office. They just said, ‘You’re on your own,’ so I thought, Fine.”
At Bolehyde Camilla was having second thoughts. She no longer believed that Diana was as naïve as she had at first assumed. She could see too that Charles was attracted to Diana, that he was looking at her with covetous glances, that a familiarity had formed between them. Camilla was anxious now that she and Kanga had miscalculated. She attempted to dissuade Diana from encouraging Charles to propose. Diana began to wonder why and how Camilla seemed to know so much about Charles and herself.
In fact, Charles spoke on the phone to Camilla several times a day. There was little she did not know—what was said in his conversations with Diana, how much Diana was in love with him, how zealously she was defending her honour, what she wore, and on and on. Armed with this inside information, Camilla implied to Diana that she was making a fool of herself, that her schoolgirl gush was embarrassing Charles. Camilla had sensed that the game she had started was now outside her court and she was fighting to bring it back in.
Having championed Diana to Charles in the beginning, Camilla was unable to reverse her position without losing credibility. She tried another tactic. She became dismissive of Diana and arranged more meetings for herself with Charles. But he was now intrigued by Diana’s youthful ardour and instead chose to spend weekends with Diana at Broadlands.
Broadlands is a magnificent Elizabethan manor with exquisite Robert Adams interiors. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had spent their honeymoon there so the place had a romantic history. At that time the press and over-zealous well-wishers had hidden in trees and long grass to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. This time Diana and Charles had outwitted the press, who thought they were at Balmoral. They walked in Broadlands’ lush gardens, and exchanged confidences before a glowing fire in the study.
Diana felt great compassion for Charles. They talked of their families, their love of nature, their unhappiness at school. Diana sensed that Charles needed mothering, but kept her distance. They sat up late talking—nothing intellectually challenging, Diana said later, and added that Charles had “a besotted look in his eyes.” If it was lust, Diana did not recognize it: she wanted to believe that what she saw was love.
They had separate bedroom suites and Charles’s staff, including his valet, Stephen Barry—an ally of Camilla and suspicious of “the Virgin child,” as he called Diana—were also present. Diana returned to Coleherne Court in a romantic fervour, certain that Charles would soon propose.
Lady Fermoy, aware of Camilla’s significance in Charles’s life, began to have second thoughts about Diana’s romance with the Prince of Wales. “You must understand that their [the Royal Family]… lifestyle is very different. I don’t think it will suit you,” she warned. But it was too late for such advice.
Diana spent Christmas at Althorp while Charles was at Sandringham. Raine was all over her, her stepdaughter’s past coolness forgotten. She was free with her advice and took completely the opposite stance to Lady Fermoy. She and Barbara Cartland comforted and cheered Diana on. Raine claimed she wanted to be “a refuge” for her during this time of “momentous” decision. However, the decision was not Diana’s to make. She and the Spencers waited anxiously for Charles to take the next step.
Diana continued her work at Young England, but the press dogged her every step. It was gruelling, terrifying, and sometimes she simply broke down and cried. Several reporters took pity on her and began to shield her from the unrelenting news-greed of the others. She joked with these few favourites, and in return gave them exclusive shots.
January was bleak. The skies were slate grey, a penetrating damp pervaded the city and Prince Charles had escaped to Klosters with a group of his friends, including the Parker Bowleses, for a skiing holiday. Diana had not been invited to join them—too dangerous an announcement of intention, which Charles was not yet ready to make. Before leaving for Switzerland and the home of Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson, where he would be staying, Charles had spoken with his mother about Diana and his indecision about the future of their relationship. The holiday was to give him time to consider his options.
By law Charles had to have the Queen’s permission to marry, in accordance with the Royal Marriage Act of 1772, as must all close members of the Royal Family. Where Diana was concerned the Queen had been in a quandary. She was worried about Diana’s age, the instability of her childhood, her lack of common interests with Charles. Hunting and polo were an integral part of Charles’s life but Diana was terrified of horses. Charles was a probing, intelligent, highly educated man. Diana’s education had been limited. Could she be expected to meet and talk with world figures as a Princess of Wales must? It did not seem that the pair would be compatible for long. And there was Camilla. The Queen believed that Charles could not give up that relationship and that Diana did not have the forbearance to put up with it Perhaps most important, the Queen was a caring mother: she wanted her son to be happy and she did not believe that he was in love with Diana. She was convinced that he was being pressured into making a compromise that he would ultimately regret.
There were a number of reasons why she finally agreed that the marriage could take place. First, the news coverage the romance was attracting meant that Charles could not delay his decision much longer. To do so “would cause everlasting damage to Diana Spencer’s reputation, which in any case was in danger of being compromised” by their “secret meetings” which the press reported.* Prince Philip told his son that he must either become engaged to Diana or end the relationship. Charles viewed his father’s words as an ultimatum and it was this decision that he was struggling with in Klosters.
The Queen also gave Charles strong reasons why he should propose to Diana. If he ended this relationship, with a young woman who had won public affection, the country might feel that he, an older, more experienced man, had been exploiting an innocent teenage girl—they would think of their sisters, their daughters, their granddaughters. There was little doubt that the public wanted the Prince of Wales to get married—and soon—or that Diana was a popular choice and would make a beautiful bride.
The country had also endured an extended period of inflation, joblessness, strikes, and severe problems in the National Health Service. The Queen could not help but recall how her own wedding in 1947 had brought the nation such great joy after so many years of war and sacrifice. Also, not to be forgotten was the boon to the economy that it had generated.
On Monday 2 February Charles rang Diana from Klosters. His voice was warm and confiding. “I’ve got something to ask you,” he said. “Not now, when I return.” He was to join HMS Invincible, the Royal Navy’s latest aircraft carrier, for manoeuvres on Thursday, 5 February, and would meet her on Friday the sixth at Windsor.
Diana spent the rest of the week in a state of agitation. Was he going to propose? He must be. Then shards of doubt would stab at her. He might want to tell her he had decided they were wrong for each other, a kiss on the cheek and goodbye and that would be it. She went about her usual schedule at Young England, was silent in the face of queries from newshounds, and spent her evenings “in with the girls.”
On Friday morning she had her hair done at Headlines, in South Kensington, where Kevin Shanley had been her stylist for the last three years. Later, on that winter afternoon, her hair shiny and neat, her legs freshly waxed, she barrelled her way through the press corps and drove out to Windsor. She arrived around five o’clock, and was immediately rushed inside by security guards.
Charles came to greet her, took her hand and ordered tea. Then he led her on a short tour of the family’s private rooms in the castle. When they entered the nursery she shivered slightly and he put his arm about her. Then he proposed. Diana had been waiting so anxiously to hear this, but the question did not seem real. She laughed nervously, then accepted him. Charles reminded her that marriage to him meant that she would one day be queen, and she said she understood the responsibility involved.
He kissed her lightly then said, “I must call Mummy,” and was gone.
Diana sat in shock for a long while. The Prince of Wales had proposed and she had accepted. It dawned on her then that Charles had never said he loved her. None the less she believed that he had just been too overcome to say the words.
She returned to her flat that night convinced (“in my immaturity”) that Charles was in love with her. She went into her room, sat down on her bed and called in her three flatmates.
“Guess what?” she said, a mischievous look in her eye.
“He asked you!” yelled the three in unison. “What did you say?”
“Yes, please.”
The girls screamed with delight It was one a.m. The press had abandoned their posts and gone home for the night. The girls piled into Diana’s car and circled Hyde Park several times. They talked, and talked, and talked. Diana told them that Charles wanted to wait three or four weeks before publicly announcing their engagement, to give her time to think about it and feel sure she had made the right decision. As soon as it was made public, she would have to move into rooms at either Clarence House or Buckingham Palace so that she would be under close security guard. Everyone cried and hugged each other. It meant the end of life as they knew it at Coleherne Court, but Diana was to be Princess of Wales. Once back at the flat they toasted Diana in Coca-Cola—she had never liked alcohol.
The next morning Diana telephoned her father. He told her that Charles had already rung up. “Can I marry your daughter? I have asked her,” he quoted the Prince, “and very surprisingly she has said yes.” Earl Spencer replied, “Well done,” and told him he was delighted for the two of them. That had been only moments before her call. “Diana, you must marry the man you love,” he said. “That’s what I’m doing,” she replied. Then she telephoned her mother, who was also thrilled and suggested that as it would be weeks before an official announcement was made, perhaps she would join Peter and herself in Australia where she could enjoy the sun and rest.
Two days later, she was on her way Down Under for three weeks. The English press was puzzled. Was this the end of Diana’s romance with Charles?
When Diana reached the Shand Kydds’ remote farmhouse she also became puzzled. Charles did not telephone her and when she rang him he was out and never returned her call. His neglect disturbed her, she was unable to eat and lost over ten pounds.
She returned to London on Sunday, 22 February, tanned and slim, her mother’s wedding list in hand. Her father and Raine met her at the airport. Security police led them through a private exit to where their car was waiting. Her father wanted her to go back to Althorp with them, but Diana said she had left a message for Charles that she would be at Coleherne Court.
Shortly after she got home a member of Charles’s staff arrived with a bouquet—but no personal note. Later that day, the Prince’s private secretary, the Hon. Edward Adeane, telephoned to tell Diana that she would be collected in the morning and taken to Clarence House where she would stay as a guest of the Queen Mother, and that the following day, Tuesday, 24 February, an official announcement of her engagement to the Prince of Wales would be made. Less than an hour after Adeane’s call, Chief Inspector Paul Officer was stationed at the flat. “I just want you to know,” he told Diana, “that this is your last night of freedom ever for the rest of your life, so make the most of it.”
Clarence House had been the first residence of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh and had been renovated at that time. When George VI died, and his daughter succeeded him, she moved into Buckingham Palace while the Queen Mother went to Clarence House.
When Diana arrived with her one suitcase, packed—she was sure—with all the wrong things, there was only a curt member of the Queen Mother’s staff to greet her. “It was like arriving at a strange hotel,” she said. She was shown to her suite, where she found a large bouquet from Charles with a note to say that he would see her that evening. On her pillow lay an envelope. It was a letter from Camilla, dated two days earlier: “Such exciting news about the engagement. Let’s do have lunch when the Prince of Wales goes to Australia and New Zealand. He’s going to be away three weeks. I’d love to see the ring. Love, Camilla.”
Diana was perplexed. Charles had not mentioned an impending trip, and since her engagement ring was as yet only a drawing of a sapphire with eighteen diamonds encircling it, Camilla’s wish to see it seemed premature. And how had Camilla known two days ago that she was going to be at Clarence House when Diana herself had not yet been informed of it? Camilla’s letter unsettled her.
Also she was at a loss to know what to do with herself: no one had offered a tour of the house so she remained in her room while an elderly maid helped her unpack. Finally, Lady Fermoy telephoned to congratulate her and to say that she would be expected in the Queen Mother’s sitting room for tea and that she would join her there. Someone would come to her rooms to escort her. “Wear something simple,” she was informed, “and don’t forget to curtsy.”
Lady Fermoy’s presence was meant to ease the tension at tea, but her grandmother was unusually restrained. Diana had always though of the Queen Mother as friendly, but today she felt as if she were undergoing a clinical inspection. Happily, Charles soon joined them. She curtsied. “Good to see you, sir.” He grinned and she relaxed. He kissed his grandmother’s cheek, then Diana’s lightly.
When they had finished tea, a man from Garrard’s, the Crown jewellers, joined them. He carried a case and had come on the pretext that it was soon going to be Prince Andrew’s twenty-first birthday. The case supposedly held signet rings so that the Queen Mother could choose one as a gift for her grandson. The case actually contained nine or ten huge sapphires for Diana to select the one she wanted as the central stone for her engagement ring. She chose the largest and bluest (Its rumoured price was £28,000.)
None of this was how Diana had pictured her engagement and, like Alice in Wonderland—not an unlikely comparison, for she felt suddenly very small and very frightened—things grew curiouser and curiouser.
*James Whitaker of the Daily Mirror had reported that he had seen Diana enter a carriage of the royal train, where Charles was waiting for her, and had spent the night. The story was not verified by any other witnesses and there was speculation that the “woman on the train” might have been Camilla Parker Bowles, but this was at a time when Camilla’s name was not linked in the media with Charles’s.