Shadows of a Princess

Meanwhile, host government officials, Embassy staff and senior members of the Wales household (the collective term for private secretaries and other top management) laboured to produce a programme befitting the stature of the visitors. The planes, boats, trains and cars – as well as the cameras, crowds, guards of honour and banquets – combined to create the overall theatrical effect without which no royal visit can be really royal. Adjusted for scale, the same principles apply equally to a visit to a crèche as much as to a continent. Add the scrutiny of the press and the unpredictability of foreign hosts’ resources, and it is little wonder that touring is seen as one of the greatest tests royal service can provide. Little wonder either that it demands the full set of royal stage props to achieve its full effect.

Every month or so a list of forthcoming engagements was circulated in the office. For many excellent reasons it was treated as a confidential document, though whether to thwart terrorists or merely to baffle the Queen’s Flight was never fully explained. Its colloquial name was Mole News, since it was assumed that its list of dates and places would form the leaker’s basic fare. By the time of my arrival, however, the leaking was beginning to emanate from more exalted sources such as royal ‘friends’ and other thinly disguised mouthpieces for the Prince and Princess themselves. Eventually Mole News practically lost its original innocent purpose as a simple planning aid and became instead just another piece on the board game of misinformation in the intelligence war between them. As they drew up their diaries with more and more of an eye to the media impact of their activities, information on each other’s future movements became vital in the popularity contest that they were both beginning to wage.

Soon after my arrival I had scanned this programme eagerly, looking for my first chance of an overseas trip. Disappointingly it seemed that I would have to wait almost a year before I could join the veterans whose briefcases sported the tour labels which I so coveted. I was scheduled to accompany Their Royal Highnesses on a tour of the Gulf States in March 1989. At least, I thought, it was a part of the world I knew slightly and liked a lot. Also it would be hot and I would at last have an excuse to wear that expensive tropical uniform – the preferred choice of most officers who had seen Top Gun.

In Mole News joint engagements were indicated with an asterisk. What had not yet been widely noticed, however, was that asterisks were becoming a rarity. In fact, by the late eighties joint appearances at home were already mostly confined to set-piece events such as the Queen’s Birthday Parade, the Garter Ceremony, Ascot and the staff Christmas lunch. The same trend of disappearing asterisks was visible in the overseas programme. Solo expeditions had always been a feature of royal overseas work, but the Waleses were noticeably beginning to make more and more of their overseas trips alone. This was bad for publicity – it just fuelled rumours about the state of the marriage – but for staff in the firing line it was also a bit of a relief. The coup de grâce was finally administered to joint tours by the Korea trip of November 1992, but the signs of a terminal divergence of interest were already perceptible in January 1989 when I joined the Gulf recce party at Heathrow.

Just as joint engagements gave the Prince and Princess the chance to work together (however reluctantly), so they drew their respective staffs into cautious co-operation. When they were on form, we saw our employers put on a double act which carried the world before it. For our part, we enjoyed the opportunity to put aside the growing estrangements of the office and reclassify our differences as merely interesting variations of technique.

The Prince’s team provided the lead. Under the direction of the private secretary or his deputy, His Royal Highness’s press secretary and senior personal protection officer (PPO) were joined by either his own or his wife’s equerry, depending on whose turn it was to swap the pressures of the St James’s office for the pressures of its temporary foreign equivalent. On the tour itself this would mean that I would primarily be in attendance on the Prince, particularly if any of the engagements called for military uniform to be worn. The Princess would take a lady-in-waiting and forgo the services of her equerry unless he could negotiate his absence from the Prince’s entourage, a loss which His Royal Highness bore with increasing fortitude as time passed.

The gloss on my picture of royal tours soon began to look pretty patchy. I would be junior boy on the recce team – the private secretary’s scribe, memory and general bag-carrier. On the tour I would also be responsible for transport, accommodation, the travelling office and a million undefined administrative details. The horrifying truth slowly dawned that I would take the rap for the great majority of potential cock-ups, and so it proved.

I found myself treading on eggshells even before I had left the UK. Taking leave of the Princess was never easy, even when going abroad ‘on duty’ as I would be for this recce. Arrivals and departures were important to her. They were landmarks in an otherwise monotonous landscape of public and private routine. They presented opportunities for her to make a point. The simple exchanges involved often gained an extra theatrical value as she expressed delight with a greeting or wistful regret at a parting. Her natural ability to influence moods was at its strongest when first and last impressions could be created. This was a characteristic ideally suited to the life of transitory encounters that she led in public.

Also, I found that I missed her. This was partly sentiment – employed to serve and, metaphorically, to defend her, I sometimes felt a vague sense of negligence if separated from her for long. As I grew less impressionable, this was supplemented by a healthy suspicion of what she might be doing or saying in my absence.

In her moments of greatest doubt, any absence for any reason could be exploited to support a passing prejudice. Thus going away on holiday could provoke an envy bordering on resentment, apparently impervious to her own frequent absences on ski slopes or beaches. She paid lip service to the need for staff ‘R and R’, but seldom missed a chance to make you feel just a little bit guilty for taking it. Going away on recces was scarcely less suspect. Even when I knew I was heading for a tough recce far from home in an inhospitable land, she somehow managed to make me feel like a truant, if not an actual deserter.

She would look up wearily from a desk that had suddenly become conspicuously crowded and give me a well-practised, reproachful look. ‘It doesn’t seem fair on you’ – by which she meant her – ‘to be sending you away. We’re so busy at the moment.’ (We were always ‘so busy’.)

‘Well, Ma’am, you know I can’t get out of it – I’m duty for this tour. And everything’s up to date here …’ She looked meaningfully at the papers on her desk. ‘And I won’t be away for long. I’ll phone.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘And take pictures. Then you can see what I’m letting you in for!’

‘Hmm.’

That was obviously an idea too far. I had failed to lighten the atmosphere and it took the application of several airline gin and tonics to ease the feeling that I was abandoning her.

That feeling never entirely left me and, if anything, it got worse as the years passed and her position in the hierarchy began to be threatened. She once memorably had me paged at Heathrow as I was about to leave for a decidedly non-recreational recce of Japan. Expecting some nameless catastrophe, I took her call with a heavy heart. She knew exactly where I was and that I was about to miss my plane, yet she spent 10 minutes cross-examining me on a minor diary item months in the future. Of course I had none of the paperwork with me and my memory refused to come to my rescue in the crisis. From her voice, the Princess’s loneliness was transparently obvious, even when expressed in the reassuringly familiar format of chiding her scatterbrained private secretary. A call that began with contrived recrimination ended with genuine good wishes for my success and a quick return. No wonder I felt a heel.

Especially when feeling beleaguered – not uncommon – she would sometimes wonder aloud whether a protection officer could not achieve just as much as the private secretary now shuffling in front of her, visibly champing for his club-class dinner. In some households it was true that an experienced PPO could more than adequately organize security, logistics and even domestic arrangements, but the requirements of the Waleses and their entourage demanded attention to a range and depth of subjects that were beyond the reasonable capacities of any single person.

Local British Embassies could also not be expected to shoulder more than the already considerable extra workload our visits entailed. A sensible rule was therefore followed by all with responsibility for royal programmes: ‘Never recce anything you’re not going to visit, but never visit anything you haven’t recced.’ There was nothing more unsettling than arriving blind at an unknown destination for a high-profile engagement.

The other golden rule – ‘Avoid surprises’ – was one you broke at your peril. Whatever the hardships (or compensations), everything that could be recced was recced, regardless of raised eyebrows from envious office-bound colleagues or royal employers scenting a skive. The office folklore of recce excesses provided rich pickings for anyone wishing to believe that these foreign planning trips were not all work and no play. In due course I could add to them myself, albeit discreetly.

It was perfectly true that recceing gave you the chance to experience many royal delights twice over – and without the attentions of the press pack. Had I not flown all over the bush in Zimbabwe in search of the right refugee camp? Or lunched alone with six Indonesian princesses anxious to practise their royal conversational skills? Or even risen at dawn to see the sunrise from a frontier fort in the Khyber Pass? Too much of this kind of reminiscence could produce jaundice in the most tolerant listener, and the Princess seldom fell into that category except when on duty. I sometimes unfairly felt that there was nothing like another’s good fortune to cloud her sunny outlook. Nor was there anything more guaranteed to stir up royal displeasure than the thought that those travelling on their coat-tails were enjoying the ride.

So if the Princess asked, apparently kindly, if your room in the guest palace was comfortable, it was wise not to make too much of its huge TV set, bottomless minibar or big fluffy towels. She was not really that interested, except to find reasons for feeling resentful or exploited.

It could have gone either way, therefore, but when I said goodbye to her on the eve of my departure for the Kuwait recce she was touchingly solicitous, concerned for the hard work I faced and anxious to let me know that I would be missed. This reflected her good nature. It also reflected her tendency to see duty on her husband’s behalf – which this would largely be – as an unenviable hardship. I later concluded that it was also evidence of her foresight in realizing that this was not going to be one of those recces that anyone would sensibly envy.

Twenty-four hours later I lay in the darkness and shivered. I had not expected to feel cold in the Persian Gulf and this dusty chill had a penetrating quality. I was dog tired, but sleep was impossible. The Embassy residence was quite small and, as a junior visitor, I had been given a room that could have been used in the fight against government cuts as convincing proof that there was no feather-bedding in this corner of the Diplomatic Service. I soon started rummaging in my suitcase for extra clothes that I had not packed. My thoughts turned enviously to my companions who, because of the lack of official accommodation, had been exiled to the nearest five-star American hotel.

The shivering was not just caused by the cold. The Ambassador’s anecdotes, though intended to amuse and inform, had also contained warnings about the pitfalls awaiting us in the protocol departments of our later destinations in Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

I felt oppressed by our responsibilities, especially my own. I was scared stiff, in fact. I have never needed much excuse to indulge in a good bout of worrying and it often has the beneficial side effect of displacing my habitual lethargy. This time, however, I realized I had better reason than usual to feel apprehensive. A tour could be judged as successful against a host of different criteria – there were as many opinions as there were observers and any credit could therefore be widely distributed. No such latitude applied to the unsuccessful tour. I knew that if the verdict on our Gulf expedition was unfavourable, in the scramble to avoid the ensuing derision I would be at a disadvantage. Royal displeasure is an unstable pyrotechnic, but I had already observed that it favoured soft targets – and I was pretty sure that they came no softer than the apprentice equerry.

Even more worrying was the discovery that this regal wrath could be directed almost at will by those whose domestic responsibilities kept them closest to the royal person at its less royal moments. It may be true that no man is a hero to his valet, but it was a law of Palace survival that only a hero (and a foolhardy one at that) would disoblige a royal valet and expect to escape the inevitable explosion. I now had almost unlimited power to disoblige valets and their ilk. One poisoned word from them would drop me deep in the mire. Two poisoned words, and I might as well run away to sea, assuming the Navy would have me back.

The reason we gave to sceptical hosts when they politely queried our extensive and precise domestic requirements was that to give of their best our employers had to feel that a little piece of KP was awaiting them at the end of an arduous day’s hot and dusty engagements. In this need for domestic predictability they perhaps echoed the travel-weary businessman’s preference for hotels whose location in the world is easily guessed from the name given to the bar, or the bartender.

Both being rather exacting in their personal requirements, the Prince and Princess induced an understandable nervousness in the valet and dresser, who would bear the brunt of any shortcomings. They in turn developed powers of critical invective that would be the envy of Michelin inspectors. Their judgement in such matters was absolute and would be shared sooner or later by the Prince and Princess. It was thus the equerry’s over-riding task on the recce to ensure that they never had cause to exercise their awesome power to turn cold toast (or a sticking window, or a hard mattress) into a tour-wrecking catastrophe.

As I dozed fitfully on my own lumpy Embassy mattress, I scared myself into a cold sweat with visions of royal domestic disaster. Missing baggage, inadequate transport, unpopular room allocations, unacceptable food … the list was endless. It was so unfair. Luck seemed to play such a huge part in deciding my success or failure. Every time – as the dream descended into nightmare – the vision ended with a posse of iron-wielding valets pursuing me, mouthing damning judgement on the arcane arrangements over which I had sweated blood.

I greeted my travelling companions blearily at breakfast. Their tasks all seemed so straightforward by comparison. No wonder they had all slept so well. Then I noticed John Riddell’s expression. The normal half-amused, donnish detachment was missing, replaced by a look of unusual preoccupation. It might have been the Kuwaiti version of an English breakfast staring back at him from his plate, but I preferred to believe, with relief, that he shared some of my anxiety.

In the exotic surroundings of the desert state – and with the excuse of jet lag and general mental disorientation – it was a struggle to remember that the basic rules of recceing were basically unchanged from those I was learning to apply in more mundane surroundings in Britain. To counteract this, I acquired the knack of dismissing my surroundings, however diverting, in order to concentrate on the simple staples of timing, route, press, protocol and security.

Begun as an act of self-preservation, it became a habit that eventually passed for professionalism. Sadly, it also meant that I was often oblivious to which great event or personality I was trying to organize, save for the need to contrive my courtier’s patter into a form I judged least provocative to the local culture. It is only now, years afterwards and without the benefit of even the sketchiest diary, that this lid of detachment has been edged aside by memories which have stood the test of time. Having remained so vivid, they are probably the only ones worth having – a thought that somewhat justifies my slothful scorn of the assiduous diarist.

Assiduous was not a description I felt I could apply to my performance on the Kuwait recce, except perhaps in comparison with our delegation as a whole. I was probably applying attitudes still shaped by the demands of the Navy, however, and had yet to realize fully the deceptive way in which the courtier’s imperturbable outer calm could be mistaken for ennui.

Against this background, you can perhaps imagine the trepidation with which I set off after breakfast to recce the Salaam guest palace. In an ominous development, none of my colleagues felt able to tear themselves away from their own duties in order to accompany me. The message was clear: this was definitely the equerry’s job and I was welcome to it.

Salaam means ‘welcome’ and nobody could doubt the sincerity of the Kuwaitis’ hospitality. Nonetheless, as I stood in the grandiose marble hallway of the Salaam palace my senses slowly alerted me to the fact that however grand the title, and however warm the welcome, our temporary home was going to give the entourage plenty on which to sharpen their critical faculties.

The livid green carpet emitted an unidentifiable musky odour, which was taken up and queasily repeated in the chemical whiff I caught from voluminous drapes and curtains that billowed in the air conditioning. Insecticide, I thought. Drains, I thought, as I checked the bathrooms. What’s that? I thought, as I peered into the subterranean kitchens.

Circular in design and labyrinthine in its floor plans, the guest palace offered a bewildering range of permutations when it came to allocating rooms to the tour party. There was, of course, a formula to guide ignorant equerries in this exacting science. Distance from the royal bedroom was not arbitrarily assigned and paid no regard at all to what an outsider might think the appropriate order by seniority. It was your job not your apparent status that determined your room.

Some, such as PPOs and valets, had to be close by. Most of the rest could be parked in an outer zone from which a short sprint could bring them to the door of the royal apartments, where they could cool their heels awaiting the summons. Others still were banished to the Intercontinental hotel down the road. These were the true fortunates, unless you counted royal proximity above reliable plumbing, crisp sheets, a minibar and direct-dial phone. Few did.

The days of the recce passed in a flurry of planning visits to clinics, palaces, museums, crèches, schools and even a camel race track. Everything had to be planned in minute detail – the protocol, the press, the security and the transport. Everything became blurred by fatigue and desert sand; and by the aftereffects of an intensive round of ex-pat entertainment. Down the Gulf the pattern was repeated, in Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Punch-drunk with planning and giddy with jet lag, I returned to London and managed to sell the draft programme successfully to the Princess, even though at times it threatened to remain just a confusing, technicolour jumble of memories.

It was six weeks before I returned to the Middle East. This time I was in charge of the small advance party that flew out ahead of the Prince and Princess to check on last-minute arrangements. To my dismay, instead of a few minor adjustments, I discovered that the programme needed quite major surgery. Since the recce, our hosts had made various ‘improvements’ which, though undoubtedly well intended, nevertheless posed a serious threat to the delicate structure of compromises that made up the final version approved by the Prince and Princess.

The Ambassador and his staff worked heroically to explain this and placate our puzzled hosts. At last a compromise was reached which left our original programme broadly recognizable, but I was still apprehensive as I prepared my uniform for the royal arrival next day. As if sensing my mood, several buttons chose that moment to come loose on my jacket. I clumsily set to work with the hotel repair kit, assailed by visions of bursting undone at a bad moment.

Later, I gave up the unequal struggle with my needle and thread and tackled the last of my chores for the evening. I phoned the Princess, as we had agreed I would. I imagined her at KP making her own last-minute preparations for departure in the morning. It seemed harder to imagine her waiting expectantly for me to phone.

This would not be an easy call, I thought, as I dialled the familiar number. The agreement was that I would tell her how I was getting on in general and, in particular, what she could expect to find when she finally stepped off the plane in Kuwait. She knew the programme was liable to change at short notice and, like any element of uncertainty in her public life, she found that very unsettling.

Should I tell her the changes I had been forced to agree to on my own initiative? Pre-tour morale – hers and mine – was fragile and I had no wish to incur her severe displeasure at this late stage. If I just presented her with a fait accompli when she arrived, however, I might face accusations of keeping her in the dark – a cardinal sin, if sometimes a necessary one. Perhaps I could fudge it…

‘Patrick!’ came a breathy voice. ‘I thought you must have fallen down an oil well. Where have you been?’ She giggled expectantly.

This was terrible. Often it was worse if she was nice. Goodwill expenditure was carefully noted in the royal ledger and there was usually a price to be paid sooner or later. Still, it might be worth testing. Should I tell her that new joke about the camel who applied for a sex change? Or would any sign of levity be seen as damning proof that I had been living the life of Riley in the sunshine?

‘Did you hear the one about the camel who—’

‘Patrick! I haven’t time for your smutty jokes now. Have you managed to sort the programme out? Assuming you haven’t been sitting by the pool all day.’