Diana: Story of a Princess

by Tim Clayton

  Then we talked about the self-help programme, which Shirley was a part of, and so they decided, OK, these were the places that she would visit. And by now I’m still sceptical and doing what my boss told me to do . . . but I’m beginning to say, ‘Maybe this is a little different.’

  Meanwhile the library had come up with another book on British royal protocol. In between dealing with the day-to-day work of the shelter, the women practised etiquette in their office. ‘We were all clear. We should not curtsy, we should not try to shake her hand, if she didn’t reach for our hand. We’d have to call her “Your Royal Highness” first then “Ma’am”. It was funny.’

  Shirley Reese had tried and rejected half a dozen outfits. Verona and Frances teased her about the ordeal to come.

  We gave the book on etiquette to Shirley and told her to read it three times . . . We kept asking her if she’d read it because we wanna make sure everything is just right. We had to figure how we’re gonna contain her excitement and make sure we’re not all acting like real fools in front of this Princess.

  * * *

  Patrick Jephson had recently joined the Palace staff from the navy, where he had been a friend of Richard Aylard, Diana’s previous equerry. He relished foreign travel and good food and drink, and a period of royal duty offered these in great style and abundance. His study of politics at Cambridge University was a further recommendation for royal service. His first two royal engagements abroad were the New York trip and a joint royal visit to the Gulf States, on which Jephson was able to observe the Prince and Princess together. At one stage their host asked Diana what she was planning to do. Before she had the chance to mention the many serious projects that Jephson had arranged for her, Charles leaned forward and said, ‘Shopping, isn’t it, Darling?’ Diana coloured and looked at the floor.

  On her own, Jephson found Diana an altogether different proposition. Inside the limousine or the helicopter the woman in the Catherine Walker suit and the designer sunglasses would be a riot of giggles and dirty jokes, gossip and restless energy. Looking out at the crowds: ‘Oh, look, he’s a bit dishy, hope I’m meeting him later.’ A mobile telephone in one hand, today’s schedule in the other: ‘Oh, do turn that up, it’s my favourite.’ More indiscreet chatter. The other royals were ‘the Germans’, her husband ‘the boy wonder’, his father ‘Stavros’. ‘Patrick, what do you get if you cross an apple with a nun?’ ‘I don’t know, ma’am.’ ‘A computer that won’t go down on you.’

  At the hospital or the old-people’s home the one-liners would keep flowing. Diana’s enthusiasm about the people she met was spontaneous, unforced, her talent for undercutting the everyday pomposity of life instinctive. ‘Oh, I have Capital Radio on too.’ ‘Does your boss always go on like this?’

  Later Jephson would detect cynicism in the way Diana went among her people, ‘cherry-picking’ the most appealing photo opportunities. But the inherent compassion would always remain and would always impress – what Jephson called her ‘erratic but genuine kindness’.

  Jephson and others saw Diana switch effortlessly between silliness and solicitude, walking without a trace of self-consciousness into cancer wards and leper colonies. If Diana did have something like Borderline Personality Disorder then it was well named for her, for she respected few of the emotional borders that hold most people back – feeling embarrassed, not wanting to appear crass, not knowing what to say.

  There’s a beautiful passage in Jephson’s book, recalling a scene from the late 1980s.

  As I watched her at a dying child’s bedside, holding the girl’s newly cold hand, and comforting the stricken parents, she seemed to share their grief. Not self-consciously like a stranger, not distantly like a counsellor, not even through any special experience or deep insight. Instead it just seemed that a tranquillity gathered around her. Into this stillness the weeping mother and heartbroken father poured their sorrow and there, somehow it was safe.

  And suddenly they’re back in the helicopter. ‘Watch my hat someone. Pass me over the Mail, would you. Oooh, hold on to your hats. Wonder what Dempster’s written today, something juicy about the Germans I hope. Anyone got any chocolate?’

  * * *

  The visit to Henry Street was combined with high art and high society: a performance of the opera Falstaff and a $1,000-a-seat gala dinner afterwards. Tuxedos and incubators, battered wives and canapés, overtures and AIDS: it was a mixture Diana was making all her own, while traditionalists represented by Harold Brooks-Baker, editor of Burke’s Peerage, fumed about commercial exploitation of the Royal Family.

  New York rose to Diana – every magazine, every radio station, every society hostess. This was Jackie O with an English accent, all the glamour of real-life royalty but none of the stuffiness. Even the Irish-American demonstrators, who normally dogged high-profile British visitors to this least respectful of American cities, were thin on the ground, their jeers drowned out by the tens of thousands who stood behind the NYPD’s blue crush barriers to try to get a look.

  The same barriers were lining Baruch Place and, when Diana’s limo turned the corner, Verona Middleton-Jeter was surprised to find that she could hardly swallow. Her knees were beginning to feel weak too. There were security people running around talking into their collars and, for a hundred yards down East Houston Street, people were waving flags and hand-made posters. Inside the shelter, Shirley Reese was being fussed over by her friends.

  I’m probably overdressed, and I get to the place and they have to tone me down because I wore too fancy a dress, so they put a jacket on me. Oh my God. I’d forgotten it all. I didn’t know what to do any more. They were telling me, you know, ‘do’s and don’ts’, you know, should we curtsy, when should we?

  Verona was still waiting in the courtyard.

  She got to the kerb, and someone said, ‘Well, who is gonna greet her?’ And so Danny said, ‘You, Verona. It’s you, Verona.’ And I was like, ‘Oh!’

  So then I walked over to the kerb, the car was already there . . . I guess I knew it was happening, but I – the excitement and all around us – I was in a daze. And I rushed over to the kerb, the car had driven up, and they opened the door, and this very tall, thin woman got out. And I reached my hand, and I jerked it straight back because . . . I don’t know, I was doing exactly what we knew Shirley would do . . . And I jerked it back – it was nerves – and then she got out, and she reached straight for my hand and she’s shaking it, and she’s saying, ‘Oh, hi.’

  Then she says, ‘Hey, we’re wearing the same colours.’ And then we went and we introduced her to the family. And the next thing I know she was in this kid’s bedroom, the little boy, and they had pictures on the wall, Michael Jordan, and right away she’s into basketball with this kid, and they’re talking and chatting, and talking about what’s on the wall. And she really took time and talked with that kid, and she came back out, and talked with the mother, and all along I’m standing there thinking to myself, Wow, she is really nice.

  Then Shirley’s big moment finally came.

  We’re sitting in this huge room with everybody in a circle, and I’m just looking at this woman, like. I can’t believe it, it’s real, she’s here. And then I want to say something so bad, but I don’t want to be, you know, rude or out of place. And I’m trying to compose myself, and I just burst out, ‘Listen, I just got to say it, I don’t know if I should say it or not, but oh my God, your skin is so pretty!’

  Verona threw her head back and laughed. The picture made all the New York papers.

  * * *

  VERONA: People always ask about that picture where I show all my teeth, but it really started with Shirley. Because everybody’s focus was to keep Shirley in line. This was not her Hollywood debut, and we wanted her to be just right on target. We had already put a jacket on Shirley so as to tone her outfit down, and Shirley was trying to contain herself. And the Princess, she had a way of kinda looking down when she spoke – and she’s tall too – so we were kinda looking up at her
and I saw Shirley go, and I thought, ‘Oh-oh, Shirley’s gonna talk . . .’ And Shirley said, ‘Oooh! God, you’re so preeety!’ And we were like, ‘Oh-oh! There it is. Shirley’s done it.’

  By now people are lined up out on the street, and so somebody’s like, ‘We’ve gotta take that walk.’ And so by now, you know, we’re like old buddies. And there was a kid with some tulips, and she just broke away from us and went over to that kid and she starts shaking hands with everybody behind the barricade. And again, it was like, ‘Wow! Just look at her!’

  And all along she would shake hands, all the way over to the family school, and we just talked and we strode along, and when we got in there, there were the kids . . . and you can see her lighten up.

  SHIRLEY: Started tying shoes, and . . .

  VERONA: Yeah, right away she – she was clearly a mother.

  SHIRLEY: Yeah.

  FRANCÉS: I was sitting right beside her, and the suit I had on, one of the buttons popped off, and she beat me to it, picked it right up, and she said to me, ‘We have to keep up with these little things.’ It was really nice. And then her conversation was just genuine. She wasn’t just asking questions, she was there with us. Really concerned about what the situation was with the homeless, with our population, with the battered women, with – talking a lot about the shelters, the services that we have, and it was really exciting.

  VERONA: She helped Frances with her button, but it wasn’t again like, ‘Oh well, you know, that kid’s shoe is untied, maybe one of you teachers should tie it.’ She got down there, and she’s tying the kid’s shoes. She’s relating to the kids, she’s talking to them, in such a very natural way. And once the visit was over, I really was happy that we did it.

  * * *

  We went to Henry Street twice. We walked around the projects, talking about Diana and trying to make sense of it all – for someone like her to come somewhere like this, and for it to mean something; this girl from the English country house and the Swiss finishing school. What they call the family school is a basement of one of the high-rise blocks. The teachers have to duck their heads to avoid the pipework. But there’s a lovely atmosphere – children’s pictures on the freshly painted walls, a sandpit, a slide, everything clean and organised. A lot of these children come from extremely deprived backgrounds. Most have been starved of opportunities, and some have been starved of love. One little boy grabs the hand of any visitor and tries to hug them. A teacher discreetly explains that he had been abused by his father before his mother got up the courage to bring her family to the shelter.

  When we recorded our interviews we did everything we could to get Verona, Shirley and Frances to criticise Diana. ‘How could she understand the children of Henry Street?’ we asked. ‘Wasn’t she just using you as a photo op before getting in the limo and heading back uptown?’ But all three were entirely won over by her, despite their initial scepticism. There was something about this woman that, eleven years later, made them feel blessed – and that is not too strong a word – to have spent half a day in her company. Frances Drayton says:

  They come, you know, high-ups, to meet us and you right away think, What can we offer you? What are you getting out of coming to us? But with her it was a different feel. The questions she asked, the way she asked them, her concern about not even asking questions until the press people left, was all out of respect for who we were. I don’t say that because a person is blessed to have a silver and a gold spoon in their mouth that they cannot have empathy for something that another person might have. Because that’s why communication is so important.

  We had a big sign that said ‘Welcome, Princess Di’. The families did that and we put it out front for her. It was nothing that we bought, we didn’t have to go out to shop to impress, we just did what we usually do, had all the children’s pictures, as you saw this morning in the community room. Everything was just genuine and she just fit right in. Such a beautiful person.

  * * *

  Two days earlier we had filmed our interview with Christopher Hitchens, Diana’s sternest public critic, then and now.

  ‘Christopher, don’t you get it?’

  Well, when it’s said to me, ‘What about the magical element, the element of happiness and fairy dust?’ I can’t think of it as actually an argument . . .

  Look, no one can stop anyone forming a fan club for Barry Manilow, for example. I don’t know why they do it, but I don’t have to know. But if it is said that people could not live without this as part of their system then I say that is an insult to people. It could be outgrown, it could easily be lived without. We’re not all children. But it’s exacted from us, whether we wish it or not.

  Where was Madame Ceausescu ever photographed except in an orphanage? Anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of the arts of political manipulation knows that’s what you do . . . And it worked on many people who thought, You may say what you like about the Ceausescus, but that Eleanor, she really does her charity work.

  Sometimes it can be done charismatically – as in the case of the Perón regime in Argentina. Now Juan Perón on his own would hardly have passed muster in a convention of lounge lizards, but his wife – little Eva – did have the common touch and people really wept hot tears when she died and felt that they’d lost someone who could intercede for them. And the choice of word, by the way, is deliberate, because the suggestion is that this is approaching sainthood or canonisation. It’s unhealthy, it’s dangerous and to justify it on the grounds that it’s popular is missing the point completely.

  I’ve studied a number of reprobate politicians who’ve gone the charity route to enhance their reputations, and over the even medium run it’s indissolubly related to cynicism. Certainly in New York there’s every sign of people being very competitive. You know, ‘I saw that leper first, that’s my charity! I’m going to send out the fund-raising letter for this! And Bono said he’s coming to my thing and I’ll bet he’s not coming to yours.’ And the scope for coarsening is very great, and there’s every evidence that she, Diana, began to succumb to it.

  By the end one got the distinct impression that it was part of her accessorisation, that these were accessory charities, that it was part of the appurtenance of any properly turned-out celeb.

  * * *

  Hitchens is deadly accurate about the cynicism behind some charity work, but is he right about Diana?

  If you want the world to love you – if you need the world to love you – then you do go the charity route. It stands to reason. And once you go to the orphanage or the hostel you also make sure that you stay around for a while after the cameras have been put away, so that people can report that fact too. All these things Diana did, consciously or not.

  If there’s an answer to all this then it probably lies down Henry Street. You could not meet more sincere and dedicated people than Verona, Frances and Shirley. Real people, real humanitarians, the ones who should be receiving the awards and wearing the nice dresses. They had looked at Diana with a cold eye and they had pronounced her the real deal.

  Patrick Jephson spent a lot of his time puzzling over the contradiction between the motives for these visits and the impact that they had. He knew that sometimes – and by the end, quite often – they were weapons in the Princess’s armoury, used, with the utmost calculation, to win her public support. But Jephson saw a difference between the motive and the act, and it was in the act that Diana excelled. For whatever inner reasons, once she went among the halt and the lame something shone through her that, if it wasn’t sincerity, came as close to it as to make little difference. Frances, Verona and Shirley certainly thought so, and they have seen a number of fakes in their time.

  Margaret Jay of Britain’s National Aids Trust grew short-tempered when we pressed her on this subject.

  Look, it doesn’t really matter to me why she wanted to do this kind of thing. We live in a world in which celebrities have a huge power to help organisations like mine. This one chose to and I’m grateful. End o
f story. And she didn’t have to. Or at least she didn’t have to quite as much and quite as well as she did.

  * * *

  AUTHOR: It’s a shame that she gets an award for doing humanitarian work, and you guys don’t.

  FRANCÉS: I don’t know if she got a reward, I think she got what she needed here. She really probably came to see and to share. I think it was an even exchange almost. She was honoured to meet us. That’s the way she came. She was happy to be here, you could tell. She’s still here, a piece of her. She left that here. She’s a magical type of person.

  * * *

  In 1923 Marc Bloch published the classic history of the ‘royal touch’, the ancient belief that the King’s hand could cure. Bloch wanted to explain ‘the trick’ of royal healing, its manipulation of the common people’s superstitions, the part it played in keeping them in their place. But he was also interested in the reason why ordinary people wanted to believe this kind of thing, at times seemed to demand that the trick be played upon them.

  If an institution marked out for particular ends chosen by an individual will is to take hold upon an entire nation, it must also be borne along by the deeper currents of the collective consciousness.

  For centuries in Britain royal healing was held as a proof of the Divine Right of Kings. ‘Countless witnesses have testified to it, and its fame died out only after seven centuries of sustained popularity and almost unclouded glory.’ The touching was sanctioned by the Church and accompanied by a special liturgy. The monarch remained seated, a cleric brought the sick to him one by one, and he laid his bare hands on them, then they came back again, one at a time, for him to make the sign of the Cross over their sores and hang a gold coin on a ribbon round their necks.