Patrick Jephson - Shadows of a Princess

My ears rang to the sound of princely disappointment. Why was he not being allowed to give out the new key ring he had chosen? The rebuke was addressed to an unfair world, but all available eyes turned inexorably in my direction. Disaster – never banished, only postponed – stared me in the face with a look that had been vaporizing erring equerries for a thousand years.

In my pristine white buckskin shoes, my toes wriggled in embarrassment. I squirmed. But I managed to stare back. Beneath my shame a vague sense of injustice stirred as I mentally scanned my endless list of responsibilities. All this fuss because of a key ring? Calling on distant naval experience, I fixed an expression of vague contrition on my face and simultaneously raised a quizzical eyebrow. Insolence, like beauty, is firmly in the eye of the beholder and I held my breath, awaiting the final thunderbolt, the prelude to dismissal, disgrace and – probably – public execution.

It never came. The storm passed as suddenly as it had blown up. With a smile the Prince redirected the reproach to himself. I was preserved to sin again in the future. Relief washed over me, but not before I had registered two important points: (1) always bring lots of spare gifts (or ‘gizzits’ in the jargon) to cater for sudden outbreaks of royal largesse; and (2) remember Princes get tired as well.

Like insolence and beauty, humour is also in the eye or ear of the beholder. Recovering from my experience with the gifts, I was tempted to try to be funny with the Prince on our return to England. The results were not encouraging, as I shall describe. This taught me another lesson: the Prince’s ability – which he undoubtedly has – to enjoy certain types of joke is not to be taken as an encouragement to display your own scintillating wit. That was my experience, anyway.

That aside, I had liked my first experience of working with him. It was not just the reassuring familiarity of having a male boss again: there was a humour and a warmth behind the acquired remoteness which I felt was waiting to be released, if only I had the time and guts – not to mention the presumption – to try to unlock it.

It was true, I had also detected an occasional brooding menace. Like his famous charm, it was only revealed fleetingly to me, an outsider. It jostled in his face with self-pity and other, more uplifting emotions, but it was there nevertheless, in a vengeful look or anger explosively expressed.

I learned that, among other feelings he stirred in her, many of them still warm and affectionate, the Princess also felt fear. Except when she was roused with her own formidable brand of indignation, she would go to great lengths to avoid needlessly provoking the Prince. When she felt herself to be on the receiving end of his anger, before her characteristic defiance set in I often saw a look of trepidation cross her face, as if she were once again a small girl in trouble with the grown-ups. Though not his fault, I believe it joined with other fears deep within her to produce much of the temperamental instability that increasingly became his experience of her and from which, eventually, he would do anything to escape.

Speculating about the innermost secrets of the Waleses’ marriage has often been a national pastime, at least according to the media. There is a horrifying fascination about watching other people’s relationships disintegrating. The tour I had just finished had theoretically given me the chance to indulge such voyeuristic fascination at close range, but this was not an appropriate pastime for a member of staff.

The Prince and Princess were generally considerate enough with their staff and with each other to avoid all but a few public displays of their private problems. Whatever we staff saw or heard – including an obvious aversion for each other’s company in private – we played along with the image, to outsiders, subordinates and anyone else who might ask us for royal gossip. In fact, especially during the public acrimony of the separation a few years later, I often wondered if mine was the only dinner table in the country where the subject was banned.

By the time I awoke from an exhausted sleep on our homeward flight we were already over Italy. Far below, tiny lights reminded me of the existence of another world beyond the darkened aircraft and its dozing royal cargo. Outside this warm cocoon, like the chill air of the stratosphere, the real world waited. In time it would claim me back from princesses, palaces, caviar and good whisky.

That’s OK, I thought. I’m only here till my time’s up. Then the real world can have me back. But until then I’ll enjoy the ride. I settled lower into the broad, comfortable seat. Idly I noticed the embroidered logo. How thrifty of the RAF to acquire seats from the defunct British Caledonian Airways. I dozed again, joined in my dreams by uninvited air stewardesses in tartan uniforms.

Some part of my brain, however, continued obstinately to play and replay scenes from the tour. The images and the restless thoughts that accompanied them would not switch off. It was the start of a mental treadmill, conscious and subconscious, which still turns 10 years later.

This may have been because the people and issues involved demanded a huge commitment from anyone involved in running the Wales production. For me, given my background and idealistic personality, that commitment became total. Unfortunately, the problems we were beginning to encounter in sustaining the marriage and the public image were to prove insoluble. Soon, the knowledge that we were fighting a losing battle in an atmosphere that could not countenance failure sometimes became very bad for morale. My sense of total commitment then became focused on one person – the Princess – and that put too great a burden of expectation on us both.

Back in my snug seat on the VC-10, unhappy thoughts and dim glimpses of the future chased each other round my head. Some things stood out clearly, even if their accuracy and full significance would only emerge later.

When they were working together, the Prince and Princess created a dynamism that was phenomenal. I had seen examples of it during the tour, especially during formal ceremonial moments. The effect of their arrival at something as staid as a diplomatic banquet left me in no doubt about their power. The world’s most glamorous couple, the perfect mixture of regal gravitas and youthful beauty, could provoke a reaction among even the most jaded guests, inured to real emotion by years of protocol. I sat next to enough of these government hospitality veterans to observe the look of surprised, almost embarrassed awe – quickly suppressed – that this embodiment of living royalty inspired as it shone its two famous faces upon them.

Unfortunately, the stresses it laid on the owners of these public faces created powerful polarizing forces. These two egos were a match for any number of awestruck looks, and sharing the spotlight did not bring out the best in either of them. A reluctance to work as a team would inexorably drive them apart – he to resume a long-accustomed pattern of solo engagements, she to seek an undefined, independent new role.

It would be nice, but sadly false, to claim an inspired prescience about the events that were to follow. Based on my observations during the tour, however, added to what I had learned in a year at St James’s, even I could see that my employers seldom worked as a team any more. If the stars were uncomfortable sharing top billing, then it was logical to think that they might be happier not sharing the same spotlight.

Two contrasting images stayed in my mind. The first was a glimpse of intimacy which I had never seen before, and which I was never to see again. The VC-10 had landed at one of our many ports of call – I think it was Abu Dhabi. As the plane taxied sedately towards the waiting red carpet, band, guard of honour and ruling family, the usual controlled bedlam broke out inside. There was not the remotest chance that we would ‘remain seated until the captain has switched off the “fasten seatbelts” sign’, or heed similar airline-style safety sense. Half the cabin was on its feet before we had even turned off the runway.