Chapter Four ‘Even Though God Granted You but Half a Life…’
Chapter Four
‘Even though God granted you but half a life…’
On the plane to London I found myself looking back at memories of our time together. To the innocence and smallness of our shared childhood, long before the cacophonous fanfare of Diana’s public life.
I remembered one particular day, when we were about to head to Silfield, our primary school, Diana aged about eight, me five or six, that it occurred to one of us (probably to me, as I have always had a dark take on life) that death must overtake adults not after illness, old age or accident, but surely more fairly: when they had used up their life’s allocation of spoken words.
This made such sense to our innocent minds that we started the school run that morning mute. We were convinced that our sacrifice then would store up added time on Earth for us in later years.
Ours was a commitment that only lasted the short drive to the school gate, ending as soon as we entered the happy bustle of the place with our friends, and immediately fell back into lively conversations with them.
That long ago childish hope, of cunningly side-stepping early death, seemed even more poignant now.
As I cried in shock and despair, Judi, a stewardess, appeared, and put her hand on my shoulder.
Her sad smile had a gentle kindness. Seeing how the night was going to be for me – there was clearly no chance of sleep – she handed me a box of tissues, and checked on me frequently, forbidding her team to talk to me, so I could grieve without interruption.
I recalled, from when I had lost my father, that keeping busy was a less bad way than most to confront profound grief. I thought of what it had been like then and remembered how very disappointing the eulogy at his funeral had been.
It was delivered by Norman St John-Stevas, a Conservative cabinet minister who had been one of my socially aware stepmother Raine’s coterie of ‘names’. She enjoyed inviting them to formal Sunday-lunch parties at Althorp.
St John-Stevas had made a mess of my father’s funeral eulogy, displaying more self-regard than thought.
It was an address that leant heavily on tabloid myths surrounding my family rather than touching on any helpful truth.
More regrettably still, he failed in his prime duty as a eulogist: hailing the qualities of the deceased.
It was a different matter at my father’s memorial service in St Margaret’s Church, next to Westminster Abbey, a few weeks later.
I had asked one of my father’s old friends from prep school and Eton, Robin Leigh-Pemberton, to give the eulogy that day.
His words were perceptive, moving and clear-eyed: ‘Two of Johnnie’s great characteristics,’ he said, ‘[were] an urge for warmth and sympathy in human life combined with…an independence of mind which was ready to overrule habits and conventions which did not seem to him to stand up.’ Robin loved my father, but pointed with kind, understanding humour at some of his foibles as he aged: ‘I feel that I am speaking of a golden young man and a gloriously independent, even quirky and lovable older one.’ Robin’s was a nuanced appreciation of the complete person my father had been.
Remembering the stark difference in quality between the two tributes, I knew we, as a family, must ask the right person to speak at Diana’s funeral. It would have to be somebody who could celebrate her qualities, with honesty and purpose, while touching on the rest.
I still have my black leather address book from that time. Diana bought it for me from Smythson’s, in London, as a typically generous Christmas present. Its cover is embossed with ‘Home & Abroad’ in gold lettering, the first half containing my UK contacts, the second listing those from overseas.
I combed through both sections carefully, but by the time I approached their end, I began to feel an increasingly insistent question arise in my mind. Its nagging tone refused to be silenced.
At Heathrow I was met by an old friend who had driven my car to the bottom of the plane’s steps. Someone anonymous yet powerful at the airport had been kind enough to see that I must be spared the ordeal of a press scrum at Arrivals.
As we exited the tarmac and headed north to Althorp I called my mother, asked her how she was faring (with the loss of a second child, for God’s sake), before exploring her initial thoughts about the funeral.
‘About who’s going to give the eulogy,’ I said, ‘I’ve gone through all the names that I can think of and I reckon…
well, it’s going to have to be me, isn’t it? ’
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied firmly. ‘Your sisters and I have already decided that.’
I continued towards Althorp, reminding myself that I must get round to writing something suitable over the coming days, but not thinking further on it.
There is just so much to sort out, when someone you love dies.
Especially if they do so out of the blue.
Particularly when they were a global icon.