Patrick Jephson - Shadows of a Princess

Valet and dresser headed forward to the royal compartment to tend to their charges. The private secretary, waking violently from a well-deserved doze, began urgently reading his programme. The police were squinting through the portholes as if to satisfy themselves that no suicide bombers were lying obviously in wait, while anxiously trying to get their hand-held radios to talk sense. The press secretary was at another porthole, awkwardly trying to glimpse the position of the rat pack. It seemed that only the secretaries were calmly staying put, looking out at the latest stretch of baking tarmac and methodically gathering their cabin baggage.

Supercharged with energy, I was hunting in the back of the capacious travelling wardrobe – one of our more essential ‘extras’ which the RAF helpfully fitted into the aircraft to accommodate the yards of hanging luggage. It lay immediately aft of the royal compartment and through the partly open door the Prince and Princess could be seen conducting their more elegant version of the scenes in the main cabin. Scrabbling between the gently swaying, beautifully wrapped dresses and coats, I eventually found my ceremonial sword and stood up to buckle it on.

I was still tugging my tunic into place and trying to calm my accelerating pulse when, unseen by anyone else, I noticed the Prince lightly place a hand on the Princess’s hip. It was the kind of small, encouraging gesture that might pass between any happily married couple about to face a common ordeal.

I felt an unexpected glow that such things were still possible between them. This was only slightly diminished by the further observation that the touch lasted for only a moment, and was not reciprocated. Also, there was something about the angle of the hip – which was all I could see of her – that made me think the Princess did not welcome it.

The second image came from an incident, probably related, which occurred soon afterwards. As soon as the doors opened, the activity that had been fermenting in the confines of the aircraft’s fuselage burst out into the glaring sunshine, as the supporting cast hurried down the aft gangway in time to see the Prince and Princess regally descending the front steps. I paused by the cargo hold long enough to ensure that actual violence did not erupt between our forthright baggage master and those less Welsh sent to help him, before joining the rest of the entourage in the blessed cool of the royal terminal.

It was the usual procedure. In a symbolic act of welcoming courtesy, the royal host offered his guests coffee as they sat on ornate armchairs while, at right angles, the gaggle of accompanying officials from both sides sat opposite each other on long sofas. Into the space in the middle were shepherded the press corps, who had half a minute to take the sort of staged pictures that are the staple diet of mainstream reports on all such airport encounters. After the press were shooed out, a further awkward five minutes had to be filled with small talk while energetic old men in beards refuelled our coffee cups.

The royal host and his senior guest were sticking manfully to their scripts, while the rest of us thought it polite to pretend not to be able to hear the stilted pleasantries. Plainly uncomfortable, the Princess was not joining in either, nor was she being invited to by the Prince or her host.

She seemed to have created an invisible barrier around herself, as if to say that she was apart from the polite charade going on around her. To me she looked excluded and vulnerable. To the host as well, presumably, because eventually he leaned across the Prince to ask her politely what she was hoping to do during her visit. Under the unexpected attention she visibly brightened, perhaps thinking – as I was – of the serious programme we had arranged: visits to a day centre for mentally handicapped children, a clinic for immigrant women and a girls’ business studies class.

The Prince also turned towards her, looking as if he was seeing her for the first time, ruefully indulgent, patronizing. There was an expectant hush. Before she could reply, he said with studied innocence, ‘Shopping, isn’t it, darling?’

The words dropped into the marble stillness like bricks into plate glass. The Princess coloured, mumbled something inaudible and lapsed into silence. There was an awkward pause, broken by the Prince pointedly resuming his conversation with a host whose aquiline features now registered a politer version of the disbelief I felt.

When we were outside again I cornered John Riddell. ‘Did I see what I thought I saw in there?’ I asked him.

He looked at me pityingly. ‘Oh yes, Patrick. Indeed you did. That is the world we have to live in.’

Approaching Lyneham at the end of our flight home, I perched in the spacious cockpit of the VC-10 and watched the lights of Wiltshire villages slip under the plane’s nose. The Captain, a giant of a man, blocked much of the view as he sat hunched over the instrument panel. The controls seemed like toys in his huge hands as he gently followed directions from a radar controller on the ground.

The Navigator was timing our arrival to the second, giving a running countdown to the magical ‘Doors open’ order that I had heard repeated half a dozen times in the Gulf. I was always impressed by the RAF’s mastery of such precision. This time it was different, though. The doors would open not on to blazing tarmac and a red carpet but on to a patch of drizzly British concrete. There would be no sheikhs in flowing robes and no guard of honour. Instead there would be an anxious-looking RAF duty officer and the familiar Jaguar for the short drive to Highgrove. The contrast amused me. I wondered if it would amuse Him.

We landed exactly on time. Leaving the cockpit, I felt a sudden blast of damp English air as I passed the crewmen opening the door. After nearly two weeks of air conditioning and hot desert dust, it smelt delicious. As I entered the royal compartment the Prince was peering out of the porthole. He looked up and I fell into the familiar routine for arrival at a tour destination.

‘This is Lyneham, Sir, in England. The outside temperature is 5°. The ruler is not waiting at the foot of the steps. There is no guard of honour to inspect and the band will not play the anthems. There is no press position on either the left or the right of the red carpet. In fact, there is no carpet. But there is your car, Sir, and it will take you home.’

The Prince’s mouth twitched in what I hoped was fulsome approval of my uproarious joke. Well, it had been worth a try. With a brief word of thanks he headed for the door. The ever-present valet held out an overcoat and I silently saluted the planning that had brought it magically to hand after 10 days in the desert. Then he was gone into the night. Gone to Highgrove and the familiarity of house and garden, of dogs and books and pictures, and a welcome we all knew would not be his wife’s.

FIVE

DOUBLE TAKE

I returned home exhausted and several pounds lighter, not least thanks to an energetic desert stomach bug. The Princess welcomed me back like a wandering stray and wrote me a typically generous note of appreciation. For a day or two I recuperated in the knowledge that I had survived my first tour, which had been generally recognized as a pretty challenging initiation.

Media coverage of the tour had been extensive. Still a novice, I took an immature pride in the glossy magazine stories and the TV special that followed in the days after our return. Somehow, I felt, it would not have been possible without me – which may have been true, but only to a very limited extent.

Not featured in the glossies but of growing interest to tabloid commen-tators was the state of The Marriage. I had seen some of its internal stresses while on tour – however careful the Prince and Princess were to keep their troubles to themselves, being ‘on the road’ always accentuated differences that could be smoothed over more easily at home – and already the media sharks had scented blood in the water. They would not remain hungry for long.