Imagining Diana

by Diane Clehane

  Watching how William was being groomed for his role as the future king gave Diana a greater understanding of the pressures Charles had been under as a young man during a much more restrictive era. She would never waver from her belief that if Camilla had stayed away, their marriage could have worked. The stress Diana and Charles were under separately and as a couple had been so great when they married, they were unable to draw strength from each other but instead unwisely sought comfort elsewhere. “We never had a chance,” Diana had tearfully told her therapist. “I promised myself, especially after what happened with my parents, that I would never be divorced. That’s what makes this all the more difficult.”

  Until things reached their breaking point and the Queen had written to her son and daughter-in-law urging them to end their marriage, Diana had not fully believed she and Charles would actually divorce. She never wanted her boys to grow up in separate households. She would never fully heal from the feelings of abandonment she experienced as a result of her parents divorcing. But Diana knew that revisiting the past, both its pain and the possibilities it once offered, was futile. Surviving the accident only fortified her resolute understanding of this. She was battle scarred—literally—but not broken. Diana survived for a reason. The scar had become a constant reminder of that. And she could look only to her life now and to the future if she were to have any hope of fully realizing what that reason was.

  Diana picked up her sunglasses and slid into the Ralph Lauren blazer she’d slung over a chair. She glanced out the picture window facing Central Park while she slipped on her Tod’s loafers. It was a perfect day. The park was a sea of green, and the bright sun gleamed on every reflective surface in the apartment. Diana was looking forward to seeing Teddy, who had been in Europe all week. She was eager to show him the architectural plans for the new headquarters of The Princess Diana Foundation on Madison Avenue. He’d offered her space in his offices in Bryant Park, but Diana insisted that she wanted to do something on her own. “I’ve become far too spoiled thanks to you!” she told him, only half-joking.

  The truth was, Diana had never known such a kind and generous man. He had been there for her through the dark days of her recovery (whenever Charles was kept away by Camilla), cheering her on and encouraging her to consider moving to New York after she railed about the treatment she was receiving at the hands of the British press since she’d left the hospital. When she told him how difficult it had been dealing with the unsupportive royal family as it attempted to get Mohamed Al Fayed to stop with his wild conspiracy theories, he gave her the only advice he could. “You’ve got to make up your mind to not care what they think anymore,” he said. Diana had begun to realize the only way she could hope to do that would be to leave England. She smiled as she recalled the conversation she had with Teddy when she called to tell him she was finally ready to move to New York.

  “You’re kidding? That’s great!” he said. “I guess you’ve finally had enough of those creeps.”

  “Which ones?” she asked.

  “All of them,” he deadpanned.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” she told him. “With William and Harry away at school most of the year now, I feel like the time is right.”

  “You’ll have the best of everything. I promise. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Teddy, you’ve always been so incredibly kind to me.”

  “You deserve to be happy. Your boys want you to be. I’ll take care of you.” She believed him.

  Diana and Teddy had been introduced three years before the accident when they were seated next to each other at a black-tie dinner thrown by banker and British society fixture Lord Rothschild. Ironically, the dinner was held at Spencer House, the palace built for Diana’s ancestor the 1st Earl Spencer. Teddy was impressed that Diana had read up on him before the evening. It hardly mattered though. He was so mesmerized by her dazzling aura, he could hardly concentrate on their conversation.

  Diana knew he was one of the world’s richest men, but she was surprised by the down-to-earth tycoon’s warmth and charisma. An athletic bear of a man with a mane of silver hair, he was a much-written about self-made billionaire who had played goalie on Yale’s ice hockey team and paid his way through Columbia Law School using his winnings from card games after his father lost much of the family fortune by the time Teddy got to college. At 57, he had somehow managed to remain unmarried and had enjoyed a long list of glamorous paramours that included young Hollywood actresses. He was known for being quite generous with his exes and never more than a phone call away anytime a friend needed help—or a ride to Paris on his Gulfstream IV.

  Although Teddy had grown up in Greenwich, Connecticut and attended the tony Greenwich Country Day School, and Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, he couldn’t be bothered putting on airs. He prided himself on his personal and professional instincts. “I have a God-given talent for seeing potential,” he once told an interviewer who asked about the secrets of his success. Teddy had certainly seen the potential for a relationship with Diana the night he met her and managed to disarm her with his good-natured humor. After an exchange of the usual introductory pleasantries, he looked straight into her eyes and said, “What’s wrong with that guy?”

  “Who?” asked Diana.

  “Your husband,” he said with a sly grin. “He must be crazy.” Diana giggled flirtatiously, and they’d been friends ever since.

  Back then, Teddy sometimes made the transatlantic trip just to spend a few hours with Diana, whisking her off to candlelight dinners and becoming a frequent lunch guest at Kensington Palace. Their friendship briefly turned romantic, and they dated for a short time. But their relationship fizzled when Diana met Hasnat Khan. Yet Teddy remained one of her most trusted advisors. He became a sounding board for Diana, who often called him when she needed guidance and “tactics” on how to deal with her increasingly tense relationship with the royal family as she finalized her divorce. “You need to look out for yourself. Be tough,” he counseled. “Make sure you get enough to live the life you’ve become accustomed to as a princess.” When she called to tell him about the settlement, and that she was going to lose her HRH title, he sympathized but told her, “That’s why you’ve got to move here. You can be Queen of New York!”

  At the time, Diana wasn’t ready to leave England. She was deeply in love with Hasnat—and kept his existence from Teddy. He, in turn, was interested enough in her that when he saw photographs of Diana in St. Tropez with William and Harry—and later aboard the Jonikal in Dodi’s arms—he called Diana’s mobile, ostensibly to make sure that the proper security precautions were being followed.

  “I’m fine, Teddy,” Diana said at the time. “Mohamed was a friend of my father’s. He’s been inviting me to join him on holidays forever, and when he asked me to bring the boys to St. Tropez this year, I said yes because I wasn’t going to be able to bring them to America. I didn’t even know Dodi was joining us. Don’t worry. I’ll see you when we get back.”

  When Diana was first looking for a place for a summer holiday with William and Harry, it was Teddy who had found her a beach house in the Hamptons—conveniently located just a few miles away from his estate.

  British security had vetoed her request to take her sons to the Hamptons because of safety concerns but had found the Fayeds’ yacht an acceptable alternative. After the crash, Teddy was furious that he had been denied the chance to offer Diana a haven for a relaxing—and secure—holiday with her sons. He was not going to leave her recovery in the hands of people he knew Diana did not trust. He flew several specialists from New York to Paris and later London when she was transferred to King Edward VII’s Hospital to consult on Diana’s condition.

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  Diana’s first year in New York had been unexpectedly difficult. While William and Harry encouraged her move to America, she missed her sons terribly now that she couldn’t get in her BMW and drive to visit them at
school. She also was bothered by the increasing number of stories about Charles and Camilla’s relationship possibly inching toward marriage. Since she and her ex-husband never discussed it, Diana was unable to judge firsthand how serious things had gotten. Even though she had come to realize that Camilla was not the sole reason her marriage had imploded, Diana despised her and always would.

  Diana had a small circle of friends in New York comprising mainly a few magazine editors, fashion executives and designers whom she frequently lunched with and sometimes accompanied to the ballet and glamorous galas. She suffered a terrible blow when two months after she’d moved to Manhattan, her closest friend in the city, Liz Tilberis, died after a long and bravely fought battle with ovarian cancer. Diana was recovering from her third surgery to lessen her scar and was devastated that she was not able to attend the funeral. Still an inveterate letter writer, Diana penned her personal tribute to Liz and sent it to her husband, who read it at the service.

  In New York City, Diana felt like she was just one of many famous faces—even if hers was the most famous. There were frequent mentions in “Page Six” and photographs taken by Bill Cunningham for the “Style” section in the Sunday New York Times. Photographers clustered outside The Carlyle and lurked in front of Cipriani or the Four Seasons after she’d had lunch, but there seemed to be some unwritten code of civil conduct the press followed here that didn’t exist in London.

  Teddy’s vast wealth had also provided Diana with a certain amount of insulation from the public. She glided all over Manhattan in a bulletproof Mercedes with the private security detail he’d hired to accompany her everywhere following at a discreet distance. (Diana asked the Queen to reinstate her royal protection officers any time she was in London for a public event or went abroad on humanitarian missions, and her request had been granted.)

  Very soon after her arrival, it was as if the inhabitants of her newly adopted city had become not only proud, but protective, of their newest transplant. In London, police escorts are known for their discretion, but in New York City, especially for her appearances at the United Nations, it was as if a marching band replete with sirens and flashing lights cleared a path for her. The city’s police force was not above using a bullhorn to command other motorists to “GET OUT OF THE WAY! PULL OVER!” She felt safe and loved in New York, even relishing the adoration of the city’s famously extroverted dwellers, who made their affection for her apparent whenever she made an appearance. Diana had always coveted attention, even public frenzy, but only on her own terms.

  She was the most-sought-after guest for every fashion show and awards gala in town. The first time she’d gone to the theater, the lead actor in the play, who had gone public with his AIDS diagnosis a few weeks before, told the audience after the performance that there was a special guest in their midst, and the audience acknowledged Diana’s work with HIV/AIDS with a rapturous standing ovation. This kind of reception for Diana had become commonplace in New York, and the city’s consensus—from the yellow cabbie to the most gilded blueblood—seemed to be that Diana was good for New York. And she, in turn, felt that it was good for her.

  Diana was inundated with invitations to serve as chair for the city’s chicest and ‘most important’ benefits. The American Ballet Theater had recently asked her to join its board. She was flattered by these overtures, but was extremely selective, not wanting to align herself too closely with too many glamorous events and causes, much as they excited her. Diana very much enjoyed her status as an international fashion icon, which was valuable currency in New York. But she understood that it was her intrepid work with ‘the constituency of the disenfranchised’ that not only resonated more with the wider world, but also was the key to setting her further apart from the traditional royal approach to humanitarian work. The sad irony was that only Diana understood that she connected so well with the disenfranchised not because of her own feelings of rejection, but in spite of them. Yes, her scars—both the long simmering emotional and now physical—made her strongly identify with those fighting their own battles. But sometimes the similarities she saw in them struck too close to home. No one knew how often Diana had to bury her own feelings of unworthiness to square her shoulders and soldier through an appearance at a hospital since the crash.

  While she was careful to make sure her charity work was distinguished from Charles’s own work with the Prince’s Trust and did not eclipse any of the Queen’s public events, there were of course detractors. Diana had often been accused by some members of the royal family of grandstanding by repeatedly putting herself in the heart of some of the world’s most dangerous places as part of her humanitarian work. The criticism used to hurt, but she had begun to heed Teddy’s advice, caring less and less about what the royals thought. “They can’t have it both ways; they can’t banish me one day and then try to control me the next,” she said.

  Now there were cries that Diana had become “too political” because she was backed by Tony Blair after having been officially named a humanitarian ambassador for Britain. “I am not a political figure,” was her standard response. “I am committed to bringing attention to global problems. I am and always will be a humanitarian figure.” Still, she had started to pull back from some of the work she was doing with the prime minister as she increasingly felt she could be used in a more serious role working with charitable organizations and foundations rather than just as window dressing for his campaigns. As Diana envisioned going back to traveling the world on behalf of her humanitarian work, those crippling feelings of insecurity began to reemerge. When the time came, would she be up to the job of connecting with people whose lives she had made it her mission to improve? After all, she was a changed woman. She looked different. She was different.

  It was William, home for the Christmas holiday the prior year, who had bolstered Diana’s resolve and helped ease her pangs of self-doubt.

  “What are you worried about, Mummy?” he had asked. “I’m sure people are a lot more nervous about meeting you than you are about seeing them.”

  “Oh, William,” sighed Diana. “Many of them will have no idea who I am.”

  “Then that’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it? They don’t know you. They don’t know what happened. And they don’t need to. You’re just someone who has come to see them because you care. Nothing else matters.”

  “I want them to know I understand their pain. I want to help ease their suffering.”

  “You will, just by being there. And maybe they can help you too.”

  Diana tenderly brushed aside the hair from her son’s forehead. Once again, he had proved to be wise beyond his years, which only fortified Diana’s hope that her son’s sensitivity would one day make him one of Britain’s greatest monarchs.

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  Across the pond, the British press had a new storyline, comparing Diana to Jackie Kennedy when they learned that she and Teddy had reconnected.

  There were several snarky stories that speculated about whether Diana was planning on making the billionaire her own Aristotle Onassis. Teddy laughed it off (“I hope I’m better looking than that guy!”), but Diana felt it made her seem like a gold digger. “None of these stories ever mention I have my own money!” she wailed. She did, but not enough to maintain the lifestyle she’d been accustomed to as a member of the British royal family while living in New York. Diana had been awarded a settlement of 17 million pounds in her divorce, which was, according to one of Prince Charles’s former financial advisors, “every penny he had.” To free himself from the marriage, Charles had, in fact, needed to borrow money from the Queen. The terms of the divorce had also allowed Diana to keep all the jewelry she had acquired during the marriage (“But I can’t sell any of it,” she told a friend). There was no budget from the Foreign Office for designer gowns for foreign trips (Diana had always maxed out the allotted amount, arguing that the publicity generated from the photographs of her in those dresses more than made up
for the expense). Mindful of looking like those greedy actresses willing to shill for designer dresses in exchange for cost-free couture, Diana always sent a check off the very day a bill arrived from any fashion house with which she worked. But, if one of her dear friends insisted on ‘gifting’ her a gown, she would reward the giver by sending a signed photograph of herself in the dress that could be proudly displayed in an office or showroom.

  Diana did not own any property—her Kensington Palace apartments belonged to the Queen. Althorp, the Spencer family’s ancestral home, belonged to her brother. So it made sense that Diana would need the additional millions that a master of the universe could provide to live a luxurious post-royal life.

  Things got worse when John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash with his wife and her sister. Diana had secretly met the Kennedy scion at The Carlyle in 1995 at his invitation to discuss the possibility of a cover story for his new magazine, George. He was proposing she dress in costume of a famous historical figure (as all the celebrities who appeared on his magazine’s cover did) and suggested she would make a fabulous Queen Elizabeth I for a special issue devoted to the U.S.-U.K. relationship. Diana dissolved into fits of laughter when she received his letter outlining his plan. “That would really send them all over the edge, wouldn’t it?” she asked her butler at the time. She had no intention whatsoever of participating in a story for George, but Diana had always wanted to meet the handsome son of the former president and the woman she had long admired. Diana found JFK Jr. very sexy, and they openly flirted with each other during their two-hour meeting. She was 33 at the time and Kennedy was only a year older. The chemistry between them was positively electric. Diana knew that with a little encouragement, they’d have wound up in bed, but ever mindful of the public relations war she was engaged in with her estranged husband, she wasn’t about to provide any possible ammunition for the opposition.