felt that somewhere inside she knew at least a part of what they were feeling. That was all the moment needed.
The Princess did have some experience of what they were feeling, and she usually managed to let it appear rather more, but the suffering she felt had none of the merciful clarity of bereavement. As I slowly discovered, it was dark and complex and grew from years of stunted emotional growth. The compassion she showed others was not drawn from some deep supply within her. Rather, it was a reflection of the attention she herself craved. Once we had returned her to the lonely privacy of her palace, I sensed she had little left over for herself.
Instead, she increasingly settled for the illusion of compassion. Reading about herself as ‘the caring Princess’, she felt a soothing glow of achievement, but the reality was that her compassion came to be reserved largely for the cameras. It was not exclusively so, because along with a cynical use of her saintly reputation there was an erratic but genuine kindness. Even this struggled to remain anonymous, however. The surprised recipients of flowers or sympathetic messages after some well-publicized tragedy might justifiably have suspected that their good fortune – artlessly shared with a local newspaper – just added to the overall illusion.
As for the cumulative, corrosive effect of this on her own sense of self-worth, I was to discover that it could be severe. Even at the outset I could see that receiving credit for virtues she did not possess could not satisfy the hunger for recognition that burned within the Princess of Wales.
Gradually I slipped into my new routine, wearing the same few suits, parking under the same tree in The Mall, giving the same cheery greeting to Gladys the St James’s housekeeper, and offering up the same daily prayer for continued survival. Richard took his beer mat to his new office, the Princess began to ask for me instead of him, and I began to look forward to opening the return Bag with something less than panic.
After my first day out with her, my urgent priority was to gain confidence in planning the Princess’s public appearances. An early milestone came with my first solo recce itself. The engagement was to be quite a routine London affair – the official opening of an office and resource centre for a small children’s charity, followed by a reception to meet the usual mixture of fundraisers, charity workers and local officials.
In later years the recce might have taken me three-quarters of an hour – 15 minutes for the recce itself and 30 minutes to chat up and generally get the measure of the hosts. As the rawest apprentice, however, I must have spent nearly two hours pacing out every inch of the route, nominating press positions and marking places for individual presentations.
Then I changed everything and started again. I failed to get the measure of the hosts as well, but I think it can be safely concluded that they were very patient people.
From this I learned the importance of not hesitating to change my mind if I thought it necessary. However tempting it was to cultivate an air of infallibility, complacency was a risky companion when planning a royal visit and often led me into embarrassing U-turns. Such was my spurious authority – and their customary good manners – that few hosts objected and some, I think, even enjoyed the chance to prolong the royal experience. Generally, though, changing my mind – like confessing to my mistakes – was a pleasure to be indulged in sparingly.
Again and again I felt my lack of experience, but surprisingly quickly the time I spent on recces began to shrink. Even 15 minutes eventually became too much for some engagements. By then I knew what would work and what would not. The extra time was needed only to reassure myself that my distilled experience as passed on to the hosts would be treated like the politely phrased commandments I felt them to be.
I knew, for example, that the Princess refused to be rushed when meeting people. If time was limited the only option was to reduce the number of people she met – not, as some hosts seemed determined to try, merely to persuade her to hurry up. Nothing was more calculated to make her slow down even more.
I had seen that she liked to be punctual and well briefed, preferably in humorous, bite-sized chunks. ‘YRH will remember Mr X. Last time you visited he forgot to bow; he curtsied instead!’
She also liked plenty of elbow room when she was in the public eye. Apart from a protection officer, she preferred the gaggle of officials and dignitaries who inevitably accompanied her to keep well out of her way. I sometimes thought the equerry and lady-in-waiting were mainly there to conduct a type of genteel crowd control. With sharp elbows and distracting small talk, we became expert in buying our boss the uncrowded stage she needed to perform at her best.
I knew where the arrival line-up should be positioned, where the girl with the posy should stand, where the ribbon should be cut and where the press pen should be sited. The Princess liked short line-ups, preferably with spouses excluded. The girl with the posy should be at the end of the line, well positioned for the cameras because there was always a moment of amused miscommunication – small fingers reluctant to let go at the crucial moment – as the flowers were handed over. If not, she would laughingly contrive it. The flowers should be in neutral colours, in theory to avoid clashing with the royal outfit, and unwired.
She liked the ribbon (or the plaque or the sapling or the pharmaceutical research laboratory) to provide a backdrop that identified the cause being supported and, ideally, someone very young or very old on hand to ‘assist’ photogenically with the cutting, unveiling or digging. She preferred the press to be well penned, unobtrusively positioned and silent but for the whirr of their motor drives. Muffled yelps of delight were permitted and not infrequent, but groans and calls of ‘Just one more!’ usually met the same contrary response as requests to hurry up.
She did not like the press party – unkindly termed the ‘rat pack’ – to get too close. Cameras, flash guns and the dreaded boom microphone could all ruin the carefully arranged spontaneity that we tried to make her trademark. But nor did she like the pack too far away. She traded skilfully on the knowledge that they needed her just as much as she needed them, so she theatrically ‘endured’ their presence and could be sharp with her staff if any cameraman got too far out of line. All the players in this game knew it was a mutually advantageous conspiracy, however, and played by the rules accordingly. She gave them the shots both they and she needed, and they responded with enduring devotion.
I learned the crucial importance of seeing all planning decisions through royal rather than mortal eyes. In my ignorance I had imagined that, as with some naval chores, royalty regarded public duties as just that: duties which had to be performed as a matter of necessity, to be enjoyed if possible, to be endured if not and all to be accomplished with a noble appreciation of the greater good being served – or at least with the satisfaction of a job well done. Now it slowly dawned on me that the process was more complex and allowed the intrusion of other personal considerations. While some might see only the outward appearance of royal concern – in, say, a children’s hospice – the equerry has to allow for the emotional toll exacted by 90 minutes’ close involvement in a dozen harrowing accounts of family distress.
The engagements which required the greatest display of outward compassion (hospices were a case in point) were often those that drew deepest on the Princess’s reserves of inner goodwill and determination. I came to understand that, while showing sympathy with those in distress sometimes rewarded her with a virtuous glow, it also emphasized the loneliness with which her personal unhappiness had to be faced.
Surprisingly often, even the most efficient and well-run organization seemed unable to understand the simple practicalities of designing a visit programme. Often it was the humblest charity which had the clearest idea of how long could be spent talking to a certain number of patients and how welcome would be the obligatory shaking of influential but otherwise ungripping hands.
Watching it wrestle with such small considerations frequently seemed a measure of how well a management knew its own people. I quickly learned that the priority was not just to allocate the required number of minutes to a particular event. Frequently it was more important to practise ego-management, as a touchy official or departmental head hotly insisted on more time as if it were a measure of his importance or even – in extreme cases – his virility. Always to be pitied were those who would bear disappointing news home to their wives about the