throwing away. The symbolic link did not require the services of one of the notoriously sex-obsessed naval psychologists for interpretation.
As she looked down at us in our off-duty moments the Princess represented youth, femininity and a glamour beyond our grey steel world. She embodied the innocent vulnerability we were in extremis employed to defend. Also, being royal, she commanded the tribal loyalty our profession had valued above all else since the days of King Alfred. In addition, as a matter of simple fact, this tasty-looking bird was our future Queen.
Later, when that day in Loch Ewe felt like a relic from another lifetime, I often marvelled at the Princess’s effect on military people. That unabashed loyalty symbolized by Arethusa’s portrait was typical of reactions in messes and barracks worldwide. Sometimes the men gave the impression that they would have died for her not because it was their duty, but because they wanted to. She really seemed worth it.
So this is where she lives, I thought. I stood by the gates to Kensington Palace (or ‘KP’ as I came to call it) and looked up the long drive to where another set of gates – the security barrier – guarded the entrance to what is in fact a kind of royal compound.
The usual picture the public sees of KP is only one short face of a rectangular complex of buildings. Behind this facade – the favoured backdrop of TV reporters doing a Princess Di story – lies a warren of courtyards and gardens. Around these are an assortment of grand state apartments and smaller private apartments where the Waleses, Princess Margaret and other royal people have their London homes.
I suppose, if you have to live in a palace, this is the one to choose, in London at least. It sits at one end of Hyde Park, and if you look out of a window facing north, east or south the view is mostly of trees and grass. If you look west you can see the smart houses in ‘Millionaires’ Row’. Insulated from the noise of London’s traffic, I discovered that it was a tranquil spot, especially in summer. On a fine day the only noise was of birds and crackling police radios – sometimes punctuated by the shouts of William and Harry riding their bikes, or by the penetrating laughter of the Princess of Wales, as she stood at the front door telling a new joke to her personal protection officer before revving up her convertible and racing off.
I had imagined that the heir to the throne and his family would live somewhere elegant and spacious, in an atmosphere of restrained grandeur. I pictured French windows leading onto a lawn and perhaps a smaller version of the terrace I knew they had at Buckingham Palace. In fact, their apartment did not have much of a view at all. Tucked into the heart of the Palace complex, it was surprisingly dark. The Princess had a love–hate relationship with it. It was convenient for her public work and for shopping, and it was secure. But by 1987 it was the backdrop to a dying marriage and its walls had heard too many angry words.
Not only was the apartment dark and viewless, it was also surprisingly small. Everybody could hear everybody else. If you needed to get away from someone, there was just not enough space. The reception rooms were no bigger than you would expect in any smart town house and the private quarters were very unpalatial. Although I did not yet know it, the Prince had already moved out of the matrimonial bed and into his dressing room.
Most of the time the house was still. The Prince and Princess were usually out and the staff retreated to their places behind the scenes. Bursts of sudden activity broke the stillness, however. Every royal arrival or departure was marked by the slamming of doors, the bustle of domestic staff and, as often as not, the anxious pacing of the private secretary. Meanwhile, in the sewing room, the pantry, the kitchen and the nursery (not to mention the brushing room, the police room and the cellar) a large staff unobtrusively maintained a style of life that had changed little in a hundred years. Yet if you sent the staff home, closed the curtains and forgot to turn on all the lights, no amount of TV channels, loud music or ringing telephones could keep the darkness at bay.
Of course the house had been made comfortable – especially if you like lime-green carpet – but unless you had all the lights on, even in daytime it was gloomy. The Princess’s sitting room was the sunniest in the house. Its tall windows looked down on a pretty walled garden where she sometimes relaxed on summer evenings (though her favourite place for sunbathing was on the roof terrace). It also looked down on the front door so she could see or hear everybody approaching. She had very acute hearing. Inside, it was a grown-up version of a teenager’s room. There were two pink sofas by the fire and a smart writing desk by the window, but there were also soft toys, cushions that said ‘Good girls go to heaven – bad girls go everywhere’, and children’s school paintings on the walls. Every flat surface had photos, Halcyon Days enamel boxes or Herrend figurines crammed on to it. It was cheerful, girlish and very cluttered. It smelt good too. There were always flowers – lilies were a favourite – as well as potpourri and scented candles.
She must have been in her sitting room that day as I made my cautious approach to the anonymous black door that was to be my entrance to the world of the Waleses. I tried to look calm on the outside, as if I turned up at palaces every day, but inside I was quaking … and curious.
Before going back to the reality of my very different life in the Navy, I decided to enjoy this unexpected opportunity for as long as it lasted. I would use the chance to find out as much as I could about this woman who fascinated millions of people who had never met her and never would do so. I was not fascinated myself; not really. I already knew that would not be an advantage for anyone trying to work for her. But if I was going to have to meet this beauty, about whom I had unavoidably read and heard so much, I might as well make the most of the experience.
Nervously, I tried to check my reflection in the opaque window of the front door. I had an idea that equerries to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales were several inches taller than me in their Gucci loafers and carried a reassuring air of labradors and sports cars. They certainly did not lose their cuff links.
Summoning up all my stiffening thoughts, I pressed the bell. I could not hear if it had rung, so after several minutes I pressed it again, just as the door opened to reveal the Prince of Wales’s butler. He was about my height and wore a dark blue jacket with the Prince of Wales’s cypher on the lapels. He looked politely unimpressed. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Come in.’
Later, I came to know Harold Brown well and grew to admire his professionalism. At home and abroad, he quietly bore the hundreds of little stresses that came with dealing with his royal employers at their less attractive moments. His gift as a mimic had me crying tears of laughter into my whisky on many foreign tours. That afternoon, however, he was every inch the guardian of his master’s privacy and impassively allowed me to follow him to the Equerries’ Room where I was to await the royal summons.
Like so much of the apartment, although undeniably comfortable and well appointed, the Equerries’ Room was dark. Clever effects had been achieved with concealed lighting, pastel colourings and flowers, but the over-riding impression was one of pervasive gloom.
Two people were already there – the Princess’s lady-in-waiting, Anne Beckwith-Smith, and her current equerry, Richard Aylard. They were there to examine me as a possible recruit to their exclusive way of life. During the last few days they had been examining five others as well, of course, so they were understandably distant, if polite.
I was polite too – this was surely part of the selection process – and determined, like the butler, to look unimpressed. But I did need to go to the loo. Badly.
Groping in the semi-gloom of the cloakroom, I became the latest visitor to fumble for the trick light switch on a fiendish trompe l’oeil before finding the real switch on the wall behind me. The humour continued on the other walls, where original cartoons celebrated the Prince of Wales’s talent for self-deprecation. Other pictures showed the Prince and Princess in mostly military group shots, and the image of country-house-style domestic harmony was completed with some equestrian prints. Looking more closely, however, I could not help noticing that even the most recent photograph must have been at least five years old and all the cartoons featured a distinctly bachelor Prince.
Of course I had read the tabloid rumours about the marriage – there had recently been a furore about a visit to a badly flooded area of Wales, when