Caribbean in the New Year, and would keep him away for eight months. Before he left, Camilla came down to have lunch on the ship, once with Lord Mountbatten, with whom she had stayed with Charles at Broadlands, and on another weekend on her own.
By the time Charles came back Camilla had married Andrew Parker Bowles. They had become engaged in March, two months after he set sail, and were married at the Guards Chapel in London in July. This was what she had been waiting seven years for. He was one of the most attractive and desirable men in England and she adored him. When Charles heard of the engagement he was deeply upset. As he wrote to a friend, it seemed particularly cruel that after ‘such a blissful, peaceful and mutually happy relationship’ fate had decreed that it should last no more than six months. ‘I suppose the feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.’
Despite the bitter disappointment, he and Camilla remained friends, and during the next seven years, when he was dating other girls with enthusiasm, she was someone he could talk to. When the Parker Bowles’s first child, Tom, was born in 1975, Camilla asked Charles to be his godfather. For many years there was nothing sexual in their relationship, but because they had had such a happy and intimate affair during those six months, there remained a closeness and trust and friendship that was special. He confided in Camilla and spent a lot of time on the telephone to her. They also met at polo, parties and royal gatherings – Andrew Parker Bowles’s mother had been a friend of the Queen and he was distantly related to the Queen Mother. Camilla and her family had also been on the periphery of royalty. Her father, Bruce Shand, was a wealthy wine merchant and businessman, and her mother, Rosalind, a member of the hugely rich Cubitt family – her father was Baron Ashcombe. Camilla’s great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, had been mistress to King Edward VII, who was the Prince’s great-great-grandfather, and Camilla enjoyed the idea of history repeating itself. She and Andrew were frequently invited to stay at Sandringham, Windsor and Balmoral, and Charles went to spend weekends with Camilla and Andrew and the children in Wiltshire. Their daughter Laura was born in 1979.
The friendship only became physical again after Laura’s birth, long after Camilla realised that the philanderer she had pursued for seven years before their marriage had continued in much the same way after marriage. What was so hurtful was that as often as not the women Andrew bedded were friends of hers. As time passed, she spent a lot of time on her own in the country, looking after the children and horses, while Andrew lived in London, where he escorted other women quite openly. Under those circumstances, who was to mind if she had a fling with the Prince of Wales? It was not serious, it couldn’t go anywhere, it was just a bit of fun, and although there were occasional references to Camilla in the satirical magazine Private Eye, and the odd gossip column, it was the Prince’s single starlets that attracted the headlines.
The Duke of Edinburgh disapproved of the playboy image that the Prince was acquiring, and when he passed his thirtieth birthday, and still showed no signs of settling down, told him what he thought. Charles knew it was his duty to provide an heir for the future security and stability of the monarchy, but he wanted to find the right wife and had repeatedly spoken about choosing someone who would know what she was letting herself in for.
‘I’ve fallen in love with all sorts of girls and I fully intend to go on doing so, but I’ve made sure I haven’t married the first person I’ve fallen in love with. I think one’s got to be aware of the fact that falling madly in love with someone is not necessarily the starting point to getting married,’ he once said. ‘[Marriage] is basically a very strong friendship … I think you are lucky if you find the person attractive in the physical and the mental sense … To me marriage seems to be the biggest and most responsible step to be taken in one’s life.
‘Whatever your place in life, when you marry you are forming a partnership which you hope will last for fifty years. So I’d want to marry someone whose interests I could share. A woman not only marries a man; she marries into a way of life – a job. She’s got to have some knowledge of it, some sense of it, otherwise she wouldn’t have a clue about whether she’s going to like it. If I’m deciding on whom I want to live with for fifty years – well, that’s the last decision on which I want my head to be ruled by my heart.’
Despite the girlfriends, the Prince was fundamentally lonely and longed to find someone to share his life with. He wanted to settle down, be domestic, have a garden and dogs and children, and all the things that his friends had. He had spent his life in search of love and reassurance and was dogged by a sense of worthlessness, which his parents had done nothing to help him overcome. They are not demonstrative people, and praise for one another’s achievements is not something that comes naturally in the Royal Family.
Those who have known the family since Charles was a child say that the Queen adores her eldest son, as she adores all her children – there is no doubting the affection – but sadly it is not in her nature to be overtly affectionate. Some remember her sitting him on her knee at afternoon tea when he was small, and playing games with him, but that physical closeness disappeared as he grew older. The Queen inherited the throne when he was three years old on the death of her father, George VI, and her duties as monarch inevitably competed with motherhood, taking her away more than she would have chosen. She made it a rule to be with her children at bath and bedtime, whenever possible, and to be at home during the school holidays, but day to day care was left to much-loved nannies, which was normal in upper-class families of that period. The one time she was away for a sustained period was for the Coronation tour in 1953–54, when she and the Duke of Edinburgh were gone for six months, including Christmas. It was then that Charles saw so much of the Queen Mother and, although the Prince adores his mother, the relationship never developed the real warmth or intimacy that he shares with his grandmother.
Even on the night Diana died, when his mother was on the other side of a thin partition wall, he sat and talked and worried not with her, but with his friends and his advisers. When he thought Diana was injured and was undecided about whether to get on a plane and go to Paris, he didn’t ask his mother’s advice, he asked his private secretary; and in the arranging of the plane, his advisers spoke to her advisers. This is no ordinary mother–son relationship: Charles has been in awe of her all his life and, even at fifty, is still delighted beyond reason when she compliments him on something she has noticed he has done well.
His father is equally loving and proud of his eldest son, but no less sparing in showing it. He was rough with Charles as a child and witnesses say he frequently reduced the boy to tears. Charles was a sensitive, shy and uncertain little boy, in contrast to his sister Anne, who was tough and sure of herself and could do no wrong. The Duke probably thought this kind of treatment would make a man of Charles, but it only served to undermine his confidence still further. Charles was frightened of his father, and desperate for his approval, but try as he might to please him, he seldom could.
There are not many men of fifty, with independent means, who are still trying so hard to please their parents – certainly not men with the kind of physical courage that the Prince of Wales indisputably has. But the family that Charles was born into is not like any other family in Britain and he was conditioned to accept, without question, a way of life that normal people would find quite intolerable. Duty to Queen and country comes before any other consideration. Charles is never entirely alone: a detective is within earshot twenty-four hours a day. He never goes anywhere without someone knowing. He has no privacy, therefore, and is dependent upon the discretion of the men who shadow him.
There is no heart to the family: it is a business, an institution, and participation is not an option, it is duty. There is very little communication between members of the family. When there is, it is often by memo, or via private secretaries. And, except for holidays and ceremonial fixtures, there is very little contact between them. Their lives are run to a formula, from which there is no deviation or spontaneity, and the formality with which the Queen runs her household is from another age.
Apart from the companionship, which he craved, Charles had no need for a wife. His life was ordered: his meals were cooked; his clothes bought, laundered and laid out for him; his every whim catered for; his friends numerous, understanding and sufficiently fawning; his office compliant; his love life exciting; and his sporting activities and holidays strategically organised from one year to the next to fit in around