I noted the sadness behind my new boss’s taste in humour. She would not know how to switch a computer on, let alone use it for long enough to see it crash; and as for the oral sex … as a joke, it was reassuringly remote. The daring and crudity gave her the necessary thrill. Even if she did not fully understand what she was saying, she knew it would shock and that was what she wanted. It was the safest of safe sex.
The theme of sex was a standard feature of her joke repertoire. She seemed immune to the embarrassment it might cause others. Careful never to exceed the bounds of good taste while in the public eye, her reticence was thrown to the winds as soon as she felt she was in relatively safe surroundings. Even then her judgement was erratic. Many times I cringed as her crude jokes and braying laughter scandalized the delicate ears of outsiders such as Queen’s Flight crews, diplomats and charity officials. The desire to shock outweighed any possible pleasure she might have gained from the humour of what she said.
The same desire was apparent in her infantile mockery of other members of the royal family – though only behind their backs. Thus her husband was referred to as ‘The Boy Wonder’ or ‘The Great White Hope’, while her father-in-law was labelled ‘Stavros’ and her in-laws generally as ‘The Germans’.
Even the objects of her compassion were considered fair game. All this I could laugh off, however uneasily, as her way of coping with stress. However, the looks of worried disbelief on strangers’ faces – and those of junior staff too, worst of all – made me realize that other people’s feelings were less important to her than her desire for gratification.
By the time we were back at the Palace front door the Princess was cool and controlled again. We stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed. Each in turn, she held our eyes and inclined her head. We bowed.
This, I learned, was when she looked back over the day and judged our loyalty. If she failed to make eye contact – ‘blanked’ you, in the jargon – you had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Suddenly the jokes in the helicopter seemed a long time ago. I tried to guess if I had laughed enough.
‘Thank you all very much,’ she said, her voice now carefully neutral. But I got the message. Yes, I can be fun, but I can also choose to be an imperious madam – and now I own you.
She disappeared back up the stairs. In the silence I heard her footsteps once again, heading towards her bedroom. The door slammed. Slowly I let out my breath. This job was going to be interesting.
I drove home slowly, my mind filled with images of the day. Most vivid, of course, were those of the Princess. I had to admit, I was surprised. From that first lunch and, I suppose, from the gossipy things I had read about her, I had expected a well-meaning but essentially shallow person, perhaps in need of my manly support and worldly wisdom – a sort of royal super-Sloane. Instead, what I had seen was a polished and confident performance from a professional celebrity. Every gesture, every glance and every word – at least in public – had been consciously planned. Sometimes the planning had taken only a split second, but that simply showed how quickly she thought and how sharp were her public-pleasing instincts.
There was no doubt about it. Behind the good looks and the expensive grooming there was much more than the bimbo caricature to which her critics – even then – would have liked to limit her. That first day I saw, from her effect on the people she met, that she had a powerful, even hypnotic, charisma. Later I learned that it had the ability to conceal many flaws, or at least compensate for them.
Of all the day’s new impressions, it was perhaps the Princess’s fondness for crude humour that sat least comfortably with the public image which until now had been my only guide to her personality. When she was relaxed, the Princess’s vocabulary and verbal mannerisms were pure Sloane Ranger. Consonants were an optional extra, so words often emerged in a lazy drawl. This suited the subject matter, which in private was not always very elevated. The cruder the humour, the more her verbal discipline deserted her, as if it shared our wish suddenly to be far away, preferably with someone not expected to ascend the throne.
When she was serious, however, she commanded phrases and delivery that could make her a witty and clever conversationalist. Her speaking style was that of the verbal sprinter not the marathon runner. I doubt if anybody ever suffered a Princess of Wales monologue, except possibly when seeing her on Panorama, but many will remember – most with pleasure – being on the receiving end of one of her quicksilver one-liners.
These deserve special mention because they played a key part in shaping the impression she left. On public occasions, amplified by the hushed, deferential expectation which is the royal visitor’s usual reception, her spontaneity cut through the self-conscious small talk that thrives on British social nervousness. She reacted instinctively against pomposity – and just think how much of that she had to endure. Her favoured weapon was the verbal pinprick that released the speaker and the audience from the tension which paralyses truthful communication.
She might sit with an audience of drug addicts (or mental patients or battered wives) listening to a turgid briefing on their problems from an overly earnest therapist before leaning forward with a smile and perfect timing to whisper loudly, ‘Does he always go on like this?’ In the laughter that she knew would follow, pent-up emotion was suddenly released and contact made between Princess and pariah. As an added test – or entertainment – the turgid speaker could pretend to laugh too.
This technique, honed in a hundred hospitals, drop-in centres, outreach projects and community facilities, gave her public that feeling of intimate knowledge which is the secret ingredient of devotion. Also, like all really effective spontaneity, it knew its own boundaries. Even her wittiest remark contained a nugget of sympathy, understanding or concern. She may have been short of O levels, but she never dropped a public clanger, never mocked disability or disfigurement.
Except in the car going home, of course. Then the stress of so much emotional giving could be relieved with some pretty unedifying outbursts. By then, however, she had done her duty, left hope with the hopeless and smiles on stricken faces. We told her so, since nobody else was going to, swallowing our scruples to join in the desperate humour that she often called on in place of joy.
It was a very different world from the one I was used to. I was already beginning to learn that early impressions – whether of my new boss or my new surroundings – must never be taken at face value. I also knew that I was not there as a reward. I was there to work. Thus I quickly began to comprehend that being in royal service might provide a rather luxurious working environment, but only at my peril would I ever feel in any way entitled to it. The order of things had been made clear in the Princess’s glance as we waited to be dismissed at the end of the day: she owned us, not the other way around.
In the years that followed there were times when the grandeur and privilege of my surroundings seemed to mock my efforts at running the newest royal household. I realized, though, that it was a healthy sign sometimes to be at odds with those surroundings. In fact, I came to view with suspicion anyone who seemed to take to them too easily. I already had an idea that our royal employers could be jealous of their inheritance and suffered our intrusion only as long as we were useful – or amusing. I resolved to be both to the Princess of Wales, given the chance.
During that first day out with her, I had been surprised by her conflicting displays of compassion and indifference. I had been shocked by her crude humour when out of the public eye, some of it at the expense of those she was visiting, but I had also recognized its value as a safety valve for the stresses of spending so much time being sympathetic to those in desperate suffering or need. Even so, it would have been hard to serve someone who was so ready to find humour in such tragic situations. Luckily for my own peace of mind, I quickly learned that much of the Princess’s compassion was very definitely the genuine article.
As I watched her at a dying child’s bedside, holding the girl’s newly cold hand and comforting the stricken parents, she seemed to share their grief. Not self-consciously like a stranger, not distantly like a counsellor, not even through any special experience or deep insight. Instead it just seemed that a tranquillity gathered around her. Into this stillness the weeping mother and heartbroken father poured their sorrow and there, somehow, it was safe. The young woman