‘I AM NOT going to watch it on television,’ said my husband, as I set out for the Abbey. ‘I’ve got far too much work to do. Nor,’ he added, eyeing my dress disapprovingly, ‘should you be wearing spots, you’ll just add to the wall-to-wall measles in church.’
On the way, I perked up. It was such heaven being cheered like mad as my taxi whizzed round Parliament Square, but rather disappointing that a dustcart following us was cheered even louder.
The first person I saw outside the church was Lynda Lee-Potter looking very glamorous in a sapphire blue coat and a big white hat. I said she looked very brown, she said it must be rust. We were soon joined by Jean Rook in an even bigger hat, and Peter Townend, the Tatler guru, who felt Fergie was ‘a leetle too bumptious’.
‘Bum is the operative word,’ said a male journalist excitedly. ‘She must be a tiger in the sack.’
Guests were rolling up. An enormous cheer greeted a handsome Brazilian polo player with blackcurrant ripple hair and a sinuous wife. Lady Elmshurst, the bride’s grandmother, who comes into the Dummer newsagents every morning and only buys the papers with nice pictures of Fergie for her scrapbook, went by, saying what a nice young man Andrew was.
Ted Heath, more radiant than any bride because Maggie’s having such a foul time, waddled past saying he was happy to talk to anyone about sanctions. Upper-class women gingerly clanked jaws to avoid knocking each other’s hats off.
‘I expect we’ll find millions of chums once we get inside,’ said a beauty, looking at the press corps in dismay.
It was bitterly cold. All around me, desperate to get an angle, purple hands were scribbling purple prose. Maeve Binchey, resplendent in a tent dress and no hat, said Thank God she wasn’t filing copy till tomorrow, when she could distil all the rubbish written by us hacks.
Big Ben struck ten, in we surged. The Abbey with its blue carpet, faded rose satin seats, towering nave and towering naval officers in their splendid uniforms, made the perfect theatrical set. The pulpit was topped with flowers, like a Tory lady’s hat. White and pink carnations hung over the edge to catch a first glimpse of Fergie.
The press were going mad trying to identify everyone. The pillar on my left wasn’t very communicative, but I had high hopes of the young man on my right who was steadily making notes. Alas, his brilliant shorthand turned out to be Arabic longhand. Beyond him a Japanese was sucking toffees.
There was much speculation as to whether a girl in tuna-fish pink in the front row was Pamela Stephenson masquerading as a plain clothes human. There seemed to be far more red-heads than usual. Mr Kinnock, for example, was looking very bullish, but so he should with such a ravishing wife in her satin coat of many colours.
As a concession to morning dress, David Steel was wearing a kilt, carefully smoothing it under him like a woman as he sat down.
There was a rumble of interest as Mrs Barrantes – a wonderfully elongated figure in egg-yolk yellow – arrived with tonsillitis and Hector. Hector, one must add, despite having forgotten to iron his face and looking like Robert Maxwell’s younger brother, is jolly attractive. The second Mrs Ferguson, seated nearby, seemed far too nice to jab hatpins into either of them, but how would Major Ferguson react?
And how would Maggie react on meeting the Queen? Would they go to eleven rounds over the dwindling Commonwealth? It was all too exciting. Sitting below us now was Mrs Reagan, her huge aquamarine hat so like a swimming pool seen from the air that I was tempted to dive in and cool off.
What a pity Mr Reagan hadn’t come as well, then he and the Major, who’s appeared on television far more often in the last month, could have staged a Two Ronnies act.
On a nearby television monitor, the little bridesmaids and the pages, straight out of HMS Pinafore, were arriving at the door.
‘They’re so well behaved. I expect they tranked them beforehand,’ said an American journalist.
People with handles to their names were now nodding to Handel’s Water Music, and at last we could see Fergie, a radiant blur on the monitor. Her glass coach had more carriage lamps than a Weybridge Hacienda.
Then suddenly like an all-honours hand at bridge, the Royal Family arrived. There was the Queen in speedwell blue to match her eyes, which are so like Prince Andrew’s; and Philip bronzed and genial, like Jason Colby without his toupée; and the Queen Mother, settling happily into her chair like a great pastel swan; and Princess Anne in A-D directory yellow, who gets prettier by the day. One forgets, too, the good looks of Mark Phillips, who, despite hardly addressing a word to his wife, chatted merrily to Princess Margaret, dashing in peacock blue. Princess Alexandra stood out in bright orange, in contrast to her husband, who keeps such a low profile that a recent photograph of them both in a Canadian newspaper described him as ‘an unidentified man’!
All eyes, however, were on Fergie’s friend, Princess Diana, in her Nelson hat. With her huge startled eyes, and her bare knees covered by her service sheet, and her impossibly long, beautiful legs curled under her, she looked like a colt liable to bolt out of the church at any minute.
‘Isn’t her outfit disappointing?’ clucked a lady journalist. ‘Those spots are so old hat.’
In fact she looked lovely – and if she’d worn something spectacular, everyone would have accused her of upstaging Fergie.
The excitement began to bite as Prince Andrew arrived, looking handsome, but as white as his shirt and surreptitiously wiping his sweating hands on his trousers. Prince Edward, his supporter, ghastly word, was being supportive, another ghastly word. With his boyish pink face and rather unbecoming uniform (really one shouldn’t wear a brown belt with a blue suit) he looked like a trainee ambulance man.
At long last Fergie arrived, and the Little Dummer Girl soon to become the English Lieutenant’s Woman, set out on her long walk up the church. In her impatience to get to her prince, it was as though she were roller skating under her dress.
The Major, slightly subdued except for his punk red eyebrows, held her arm with the gentle pride of a labrador retrieving a grouse. And well he might. She looked breathtaking, her thick red-gold hair framing her face in Medusa ringlets. And the dress was a miracle – the train, glittering in the chandeliers like a huge dragon-fly wing, seemed to have a life all of its own as it rippled, irridescent, over the river of blue carpet.
Following it, Prince William, determined to give his mother a heart attack, played bumps-a-daisy with little Laura Fellowes.
‘Dearly Beloved,’ intoned the Dean.
Next it was Runcie. As he quavered on about the dreadful day of judgement, one couldn’t help wondering how many hat pins he’d used to secure his mitre, or whether he’d had his handbag searched on the way in like the rest of us.
Everyone looked happier now. Diana, though hardly taking her eyes off Prince William, beamed several times at the bride. The Queen, whatever anyone has written to the contrary, looked cheerful throughout, far happier than she had at Anne’s wedding. Maybe you relax once your first child is married. Even Philip smiled sympathetically when Fergie fluffed Andrew’s names. Perhaps he won’t be so shirty to Wogan about cue cards in future.
Above all, it was touching how Andrew and Sarah gazed into each other’s eyes and made their vows as though they really meant them, and how after each ‘I will’, you could hear the great muffled roar of approval from the crowd outside. The marriage service over, one half-expected the Major to blow his whistle for the end of a chukka.
A suntanned Prince Charles, who, at last, seems to be emerging out of Princess Diana’s shadow, then had to read a ludicrously convoluted lesson from ‘Ephesians’. With opening sentences of 107 words, one is amazed St Paul ever got anything published.
‘Lead Us Heavenly Father’ was the Major’s cue to step back and sit next to his ex-wife. A shade unforgiving, he never once in church or on television appeared to address a word to her. It seemed impossible that two people on next door seats could sit with their thighs at an angle of 120 degrees.
In the row behind, Ronnie’s son-in-law, a sturdy Australian, had been firmly placed between Hector Barrantes and the second Mrs Ferguson (if you have a supporter, why not a divider) in case, horrors, Hector tried it again.
Now they were off into the vestry. Philip guided the Queen Mother, but Mrs Barrantes was not helped by the Major, who looked as though touching the elbow she had given him thirteen years ago would have given him fifth degree burns.
So long was spent in the vestry, you’d have thought they were consummating the marriage or at least opening a bottle. Meanwhile the television cameras roamed laboriously over stained glassed windows and the more comely choir boys.
The one moment of excitement was when Mrs Thatcher, looking absolutely furious in a purple hat, chicly chosen to match the black eye she might get from the Queen, appeared on the monitor. Any minute one expected a rash of empty seats, leaving only a trail of molehills on the blue carpet. Poor Mrs Thatcher – even the unctuous Sir Alistair was beastly about her hat on television; perhaps now she’s given him his knighthood, he doesn’t feel the need to suck up to her any more.
Finally the organ broken into Elgar’s triumphal march, and the radiant new Duchess of York, having swept a beautiful curtsey to the Queen and grinned at her mother and stepmother, set out down the aisle. But she was still Fergie, you could warm your hands on the glow of happiness, and you half-expected flowers to spring out of the molehills as she passed.
Praise should also be given to her husband, who, with his wonderfully demonstrative and un-Royal way of showing he loves her, is truly a Prince Charming. Out into the sunshine they went, and the bells and the cheers rang out, and I suddenly experienced a shaming feeling of anticlimax. Over the last few months, we’ve got to know Fergie so well it seemed awful not to be going along to the reception to knock back champagne and cheer her on her way.
But there was still work to be done. Jean Rook was in a tizz because her car hadn’t arrived. I persuaded her to join me on the underground.
‘But I haven’t been on a tube for twenty years,’ she protested, looking at the gaping masses nervously. ‘What does one do?’
‘Put your money in this machine,’ I said.
‘Goodness,’ said Miss Rook in delighted surprise, ‘It’s actually given me the right change.’
All the same, I’ve got a horrible feeling I put her on to a train to Putney Bridge by mistake.
Back home, I rang my husband.
‘Wasn’t it wonderful?’ he said. ‘I watched the whole thing at the Garrick with Kingsley Amis. We both cried non-stop, except when Kingsley got apopleptic about that left-footer taking one of the prayers.’
And as the golden coaches roll home, and Fergie and Andrew set off in their red helicopter, and all the royalty experts go back into mothballs until the next wedding, one Scottish genealogist got it right:
‘It has been,’ he said, ‘a glorious glorious Sara-mony.’