Imagining Diana

by Diane Clehane

  Diana had never been with a man who not only listened so intently to her, but was also equally passionate about many of the same causes that had come to mean so much to her. Their relationship was born not only out of a genuine friendship and mutual affection, but also from mutual interests.

  She reveled in the attention of a man who was not intimidated by her celebrity.

  Teddy had been protective and solicitous of Diana the entire time they knew each other, and since her move to New York, he had only become more so. He had seen to it that she had everything she needed when she moved into her apartment at The Carlyle, even ensuring that Diana be constantly surrounded by her favorite white lilies. Every week, the hotel florist would discreetly replenish the prior week’s arrangements with fresh, resplendent bouquets. Whenever Diana feigned a protest at this extravagant and unapologetically romantic gesture, Teddy would simply kiss the palm of her hand and press it to his cheek. “You deserve it,” he’d say. “You need flowers around you. Lots of flowers.”

  He invited her to pick out some paintings from his extensive collection of expressionist and modern art for her new home. Diana chose a vibrant Picasso and made it the centerpiece, and only pop of color, in her all-white living room. She loved how airy and bright everything looked when she walked through the doors of her new apartment. All the knickknacks and stuffed animals that once filled every corner of her Kensington Palace apartment were relics of the past that had been left behind in London. This new home felt like a new beginning, and Diana had not forgotten how instrumental Teddy was in facilitating this new chapter in her life.

  Diana and Teddy had very definite, and opposing, views on marriage. Both had unhappy childhoods as a direct result of their parents’ marital woes.

  Diana’s parents openly despised each other after their divorce. Teddy’s alcoholic father had been abusive to Teddy’s mother. Even though her divorce had been bruising, Diana absolutely wanted to marry again and longed to have a daughter before it was too late. She knew she came with a lot of unwanted baggage and needed a very secure man who was not threatened by being with the most famous woman in the world. “The ideal man for me would be a widower with no children,” Diana had often told friends. Teddy, who had sworn off marriage and adopted two boys from South Africa on his own, was attracted to gorgeous, worldly women who had a healthy appetite for sex. Diana was certainly all of those things. But perhaps the greatest attraction between the two of them came down to one specific thing. Teddy loved rescuing women, and Diana, at this stage of her life, although she hated to admit it, needed some rescuing.

  They made frequent trips to the most devastated regions around the globe to not only to bring comfort but also to shed light on the often-voiceless people most affected by genocide and war. In Diana’s case, it was hard to imagine someone whose star power possessed a more incandescent wattage.

  Since resuming her work with the International Red Cross’s global campaign to ban landmines, Diana continued to visit areas ravaged by them with photographers in tow to get the message out. On these trips, Teddy often went to children’s hospitals to talk to young patients and worked with officials to move those most critically ill to facilities better equipped to treat them. Diana’s feelings for Teddy were only cemented when she saw how moved he was by the plight of the war-torn regions’ children.

  These foreign trips had become much more emotional for Diana now that she, too, bore a noticeable scar as the result of a tragedy. She knew her accident was in no way the same as what horrors these victims of violence had suffered, but she felt she now had a greater understanding of trauma and how difficult recovery could be. “They are comforting me as much as I am comforting them,” she often said.

  On one of her first trips back to Bosnia after the crash, Diana felt overcome with emotion when she visited a family who had lost their six-year-old son when a landmine exploded on a field that they believed had been cleared. The boy had been playing ball with his eight-year-old sister, who lost an eye in the explosion. Diana sat on a stone ledge in front of the house with the girl and stroked her hair. The child snuggled against Diana before her mother called her away. After she scrambled down from the wall, the girl stood silently for a moment in front of this visitor she did not know and gently placed her tiny hand on Diana’s scar. Always careful never to let people in need see her cry, Diana did her best to smile before she had to look away.

  Diana had become a valuable asset to Teddy in getting media coverage for the myriad children’s charities he supported in America. At first, she was reluctant to be a fixture at these events because she didn’t want to deflect attention away from the causes—or from Teddy. But he assured her, “I don’t care if they don’t say one word about me. If seeing you here makes some people write a bigger check, that’s fine with me.”

  Diana was thrilled she could help Teddy, but she was even more excited about announcing The Princess Diana Foundation. She had sought the advice of Hillary Clinton, whom she met when Bill was president and who was now the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from New York, about honing her eponymous foundation’s mission.

  “You’re the most famous woman in the world, and therein lies incredible power,” Hillary told her. “You can use it to do incredible things.”

  She urged Diana to focus The Princess Diana Foundation’s mission on global women’s issues and on finding ways to empower young girls around the world.

  “You can redefine what a princess can be—so much more than what’s presented in fairy tales—you’ve already shown that. Now you can do more. Much more.”

  Diana loved the idea. Her mind flashed to the young Bosnian girl who had touched her face and looked so intently into her eyes. Hillary continued, “You could have a profound impact on the lives of countless women, Diana, and especially on little girls who are constantly being bombarded with the exact opposite kinds of disempowering, disenfranchising messages from just about every direction.”

  Hillary, who was often criticized for veering into a wonkish monotone when speaking to large audiences, was warm and engaging in person. Her eyes lit up when she talked about issues she truly cared about; paramount among them was the plight of women and girls around the world. “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights,” she had famously declared just a few years earlier in Beijing when addressing the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women.

  The would-be senator’s advice resonated with Diana, who had long witnessed how social, political and economic inequality often hit women, in all corners of the world, hardest—to say nothing of the uptick in violence against women and in the sexual exploitation of young girls. Diana’s mind raced as she imagined being a major voice in the destigmatizing of mental health issues women faced—ones that she too had faced—but rarely talked about: post-partum depression; bulimia and other eating disorders, and the shame that kept victims in a vicious cycle of self-abuse; body image distortion stemming from the culture’s obsession with associating self-worth with physical perfection.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Diana. “But it’s a bit daunting. Where do I even begin?”

  “Show them,” responded Hillary. “Be your message.”

  When Diana told William and Harry what she planned to do as a result of her meeting with Clinton, they were all for it. The Princess Diana Foundation would have offices in New York and London so she could go back and forth between the two and set up sister programs in both locations.

  Diana felt buoyed by her hopes and plans in the days that followed. The higher purpose that she’d been longing to find was beginning to manifest itself and with it, a burgeoning self-confidence.

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  Later that afternoon, as Diana and Teddy were driven through the tree-lined streets of Southampton, she looked out at the immaculately landscaped privet hedges and elaborate gates that bracketed the great houses. The rolling emerald lawns
and graveled drives reminded Diana somewhat of the English countryside. When the car turned on to the narrow two-lane road offering glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean between the homes, Diana knew she was a world away from her native Britain. She had come to enjoy spending summer weekends at Teddy’s Hamptons home on Meadow Lane. The sprawling oceanfront estate with its pool, private beach and tennis courts was an oasis for the couple, who rarely left the compound on the weekend. Diana loved to swim laps before breakfast and lie in the sun listening to her favorite ’80s music on her Walkman. It was heaven.

  As the car wound its way up the long drive to the house, Diana reached over and put her hand over Teddy’s. He looked at her and smiled. “It’s going to be a great weekend,” he said. Diana was going to be meeting Teddy’s two grown sons, whom he’d adopted from South Africa as children, for the first time at the tennis tournament. He talked about them constantly, and Diana knew he loved them as much as she adored William and Harry.

  When the car stopped, it was Teddy, not the driver, who came around to open the car door for Diana. As she stepped out, he met her eyes with an excited look that made her stomach flip. “I have a surprise for you,” he said.

  April 5, 2002

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  The plane was scheduled to arrive at RAF Northolt in ten minutes. Diana’s view from the window of Teddy’s Gulfstream IV was one of a gray, rainswept early evening in London. She pulled her cashmere wrap around her shoulders, anticipating the chill, and closed the report she’d been reading. Diana received the brief titled “The United Nations on Women, Peace and Security” after the speech she gave at the UN the week before about the work The Princess Diana Foundation was doing to help women and children suffering from war-related post-traumatic stress. “Hundreds of thousands of women and children have endured the unimaginable because of acts of war against civilized society. Too many mothers have seen their families destroyed by violence and are in despair. We in the international community cannot look away,” she told the Security Council. “We must not fail those who need us the most. Our humanitarian instincts to save the helpless among us must be stronger than our desire to destroy our enemies.” Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic heralded Diana as “an important international voice of compassion and empathy” and “a woman on a mission.”

  For many years, Diana had been happy to read whatever words had been written for her by her private secretary and a handful of journalists with whom who she’d forged—usually temporary—relationships. Since starting her foundation, she had access to some of the world’s most knowledgeable and intelligent minds—from doctors to diplomats—who were more than happy to give her substantive and frequent briefings on international affairs and craft speeches that she would have a hand in finalizing.

  She had an empathy unmatched by any royal before her; one needed only view the images of her comforting those afflicted by disease or disaster to know how special she was. The applause and nearly unanimous media praise she’d receive afterward gave her the tangible approval she never received from her husband or anyone in ‘The Firm.’ She worried that she had grown almost addicted to that adulation.

  This was yet another issue that had taken years to sort out in therapy after the crash when Diana was encouraged by her therapist in New York to examine her bottomless need for approval. Her doctor, a woman in her sixties who had treated many celebrities whose neuroses were exacerbated by fame, was never blinded by the saintly image of Diana that much of the public wholeheartedly embraced. She saw Diana as a woman who had stopped growing emotionally at the beginning of her life as a royal as a result of being deprived of the usual relationships with family and friends that happen in private. Because of how isolated her life quickly became during her marriage to Charles, Diana came to feel closest to people she barely knew—and who barely knew her. In therapy, she worked hard to learn how to distinguish her tendency to over-identify with victims and channel that emotion into a more effective form of empathy.

  About a year earlier, Diana had resumed a grueling travel schedule and was rarely in New York for more than a week at a time. She traveled back to Bosnia and Africa with camera crews and had no trouble getting heads of state from around the globe to meet with her. No leader was foolish enough to miss out on such invaluable publicity. On camera and off, Diana made sure to visit local hospitals everywhere she went and never shied away from any patient, no matter how brutal their illness or injury. Diana stunned those who accompanied her on these trips. She never looked away, even when others felt squeamish, and made sure to offer those patients in the most dire circumstances the tonic of human touch.

  In the wake of September 11, Diana stopped traveling for several months so she could offer comfort to the victims’ families in her newly adopted home. In a little more than a year, she had reinvented herself as the most respected humanitarian for the new millennium. No one, she hoped, would think of her as a victim again.

  Not surprisingly, her passion for her work presented a familiar conflict with her personal life. Teddy was less than thrilled that her commitments with the foundation considerably cut down on the time Diana could accompany him on his business trips and vacations. They had planned to spend this weekend together in California, as it was the first time they were in the same country for more than a few days since becoming engaged two weeks ago. But after getting word that the Queen Mother had died, Diana decided to go to London for her funeral and stay on for a few days to spend time with William and Harry and share with them the news of her engagement to Teddy. She was adamant that her sons be the first to know, and she wanted to tell them in person.

  As the jet skidded onto the runway, Diana looked down at her bare ring finger. She had not yet worn the stunning nine-carat, radiant cut diamond ring that Teddy had had specially made for her at Tiffany. At Teddy’s request, she had stopped wearing her sapphire and diamond engagement ring from Charles some time ago. Now, both rings sat in boxes side by side in the safe at Diana’s Manhattan apartment. The time had not yet come to let the world know the world’s most famous divorced woman was going to marry again.

  Diana had not been expecting a proposal, even though it was clear that Teddy had grown tired of the tabloids breathlessly asking, “When Will They Tie the Knot?” Diana noticed Teddy had been making every effort to get William and Harry to feel as comfortable around him as possible. Ever since he flew them to the Hamptons as a surprise the weekend of his celebrity tennis tournament almost two years ago, Diana sensed a change in him. It was as if he had suddenly made his mind up that they were going to spend their lives together and was clearing any and all obstacles in their path. William and Harry liked him, but she could tell the boys were still holding out a glimmer of hope—as children of divorced households often do—that their parents would somehow get back together. Diana understood how they might misinterpret the close relationship that had evolved between she and Charles in the years following the crash. They had gone from being bitter enemies to slowly becoming each other’s confidants. During the prior school term, Diana and Charles visited Eton together to meet with the headmaster about Harry’s lackluster academic performance. Their youngest son, who had never been a stellar student but excelled at every sport he tried, jokingly told his parents he’d “keep getting D’s if it means you both visit like this more often.” Diana enjoyed rare days like those when she, Charles and the boys were together as she had always wanted them to be.

  She wondered how Charles would react to the news of her engagement to Teddy. Would he finally feel free to make Camilla his wife? Surely if they thought Diana had found happiness, the British public would have to relinquish any hard feelings they still harbored against Charles for the dissolution of their marriage. In becoming engaged to Teddy, Diana had unwittingly cleared a path for her former romantic rival to marry Charles.

  Camilla had emerged from the shadows after Diana moved to New York and finally met William and Harry. It seemed as if Charles wa
s doing his best to get the boys to accept her as a possible stepmother, although he hadn’t broached the subject with Diana. The thought of sharing her sons with Camilla upset Diana greatly, but she knew Charles’s remarrying was a distinct possibility. Even Buckingham Palace seemed resigned to the idea. All the signs were there. Based on the photographs she’d seen in magazines, Diana could tell that Camilla, who never worried much about her appearance and who Charles admired for her “earthy” charm, had undergone a royal makeover. No doubt the mission was to make Charles’s mistress a more palatable successor to her glamorous predecessor. Diana discovered her former rival had been given a generous annual clothing allowance (which made her furious as she remembered how she had been chastised for spending too much on clothes when she was married), had her teeth fixed and even gotten some Botox—all on Charles’s dime. Diana wondered whether Camilla would be attending the Queen Mother’s funeral and suddenly had another reason for wanting to go. The Queen Mother had come to dislike Diana once her marriage to Charles had begun to implode, but she detested Camilla. She had once told her daughter, within earshot of her ladies-in-waiting, “I cannot bear that woman.”

  She blamed Camilla, much more than Diana, for imperiling her favorite grandchild’s future as Britain’s next king. Now that the Queen Mother was gone, another obstacle had been cleared in Camilla’s path to officially becoming part of Charles’s life. Camilla had always made herself scarce around the Queen Mother, but Diana suspected she would not miss this opportunity to be there to comfort Charles in his time of loss, even if she still had to sit far from the royal family in church. After years of being out of the same orbit, Diana would finally see for herself just how much progress Camilla had made in being accepted by the Queen and the other royals.