Chapter Twenty-Four ‘A Girl Given the Name of the Ancient Goddess of Hunting Was, in the End, the Most Hunted Person of #2
She turned and looked at me with incredulity.
Then she creased with laughter, for the only time that week.
‘No, Charles, you most definitely cannot!’ she said, struggling for words in her mirth.
‘I don’t mean I am going “potty”, as in “nuts”.
I mean that I am just going to go to the loo!
’ It was a moment of absurd humour and miscommunication that stands out from that particularly joyless week.
The normality of life that evening was helpful.
We all pitched in, laying the table, and doing the cooking, clearing and washing-up.
Diana would have enjoyed being part of something so casual and family-oriented in Jane’s home.
The place had memories of our childhood all around us, in furniture from Park House, Ardencaple, some even from Appleshore.
Jane has always been the keeper of the family’s past.
At such occasions, with her family, or with friends who predated her marriage, Diana seemed to feel it important to show us all that she still knew how to be helpful about the house.
Even after she had long inhabited palaces and mansions, she never lost her domestic touch.
A part of her always remained true to the little girl who liked to check that Park House’s curtains were properly secured against the night ahead.
After supper, the adults in the house walked the few hundred yards up the inclined road to Kensington Palace, passing the police sentry box, and on to Diana’s apartment.
Its front door was one we had all passed through often over the years – after being greeted by a butler, or perhaps one of the succession of proud Nepalese footmen seconded to her household from the Gurkha regiment. Those soldiers always looked so honoured to be serving Diana.
I would be beckoned up the dark, outsized staircase of a royal residence, into the office-cum-sitting-room that had been decorated to reflect Diana’s sunniest mood – forget-me-not blue dominating a palette of clean, fresh, colours. She had chosen sunny warmth as the theme of her inner sanctum.
Diana would burst in full of life, with a huge smile, bellowing, ‘Yay! Carlos!’ in joyful greeting, arms wide open in preparation for a generous hug.
She would maybe be dressed for a work engagement or have come hotfoot from a dance class in another part of her home.
But she was always eager for news, gossip and fun, which would continue over a simple lunch served in the adjoining dining room.
On one such visit, I made my way up the stairs while a heavy disco beat thumped through the walls. ‘For God’s sake!’ I heard Prince Charles scream, in outrage. ‘Get her to turn off that infernal racket!’
Another time, when I visited as a student, Diana unexpectedly presented me with a jumble of objects – wooden clothes hangers and tin mugs – each of which had ‘Charles’ imprinted on them.
‘Here, Carlos – you can have these for your new house!’ I thanked her. Then Prince Charles happened to come into the room. I stood up, bowed to him as we shook hands, and called him ‘Sir’ – as my family always had to address our in-law.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked, charm turning to sharpness as he spotted the ramshackle objects in front of me.
‘I’m just giving Charles a few bits and pieces,’ said Diana.
‘But they are mine, aren’t they?’ he asked. ‘They’ve got my name on them…’
I blushed.
‘They were sort of yours,’ Diana said lightly, ‘but since you’ve never used them once, and since they’ve been sitting in cupboards gathering dust for years, and since they were about to be thrown out, they are now my little brother’s – and he will use them.’
‘Well, yes. I will, thank you. But I really don’t need them,’ I said, pushing them away from me, eager to tiptoe back from the crossfire of marital unhappiness.
‘But they’re yours now, Carlos!’ Diana said, ending the debate with a serene smile that prompted her husband to leave the room stony-faced, without a backward glance.
This time – the final time we would come to Duch’s London home – we members of her close family only made it into the ground floor.
We had known that her coffin was to be transported by hearse from the Chapel Royal to Kensington Palace earlier that evening, and we came across it now.
It lay in readiness there, as it would remain through the night, before Diana left this special place for good the next morning.
Two priests were in attendance, holding prayer books.
Flickering candles, set in magnificent silver-gilt candlesticks that had accompanied the coffin from the Chapel Royal, gently lit the profoundly moving, timeless setting.
I think now of Diana’s and my shared night terrors in Park House, as young children, and the need to have a candle burn on our bedside table, so we could feel secure enough to relax into the relief of sleep.
There was something right and poetic about candles illuminating that eve-of-funeral night watch, providing a warm aura around Diana as she lay in eternal peace, after a life so filled with exhausting drama.
The atmosphere was one of stark tragedy, but also of striking majesty. The grandeur of the surroundings served as a reminder of the truism that nobody – whatever their station in life – escapes death. Out of sombre reverence, and many deeper emotions, our voices barely exceeded a whisper.
The priests promised not to leave Diana alone at any stage. Their watch would last through the night.
My sister inspired a rare devotion, even in death.
*
Later that night, knowing that sleep was not going to come easily – if at all – some of us decided to slip quietly into the adjoining parkland of Kensington Gardens to lay our own floral tributes. We mingled anonymously with tens of thousands of others holding their own late-night farewell.
The atmosphere was extraordinary. There were flowers everywhere – in bouquets, bundles, and posies – many of them piled high at the iron gates dividing Kensington Palace from the park.
People from all over the world huddled on the ground – either seated or on their haunches – over candles and joss sticks burning in tribute to the woman they felt so strongly connected to.
To some, she was their princess. To others, their idol. Perhaps to more still, she had become a symbol of the extreme unpredictability of life, and the ever-present danger of death, which cast Diana as a figure of unimaginable tragedy, taken from her sons while still so young herself.
I have never witnessed anything more remarkable in my life.
There were countless people in every direction, brought together to say goodbye to someone who somehow had touched them so profoundly.
As Josie said to me: ‘These people really, really loved her, Charles, and identified with her. Somehow Diana held a mirror up to them, and they loved her for that.’ I added my flowers to the myriad others all around me.
A male journalist roughly my age was there that night in Kensington Palace Gardens, with the woman in his life. The two of them came over and, while she remained silent, he quietly said he knew who I was, before offering condolences.
He was from the quality end of London’s media, appeared kind and understanding, and was keen to distance himself from the tabloids.
I was grateful that he decided to ask no questions at this especially vulnerable moment.
He was not looking for copy, he was just greeting me as a fellow man, dealing with the sort of profound family loss that most are confronted with at some stage in life.
Some commentators talk about mass hysteria having overtaken Britain at this time. That is their way of explaining something that they otherwise cannot, or choose not to, understand.
There was a communal emotional reaction, for sure, but I do not think it was hysteria.
It was heartfelt, and very real. It has always struck me as particularly unevolved to try to dismiss such genuine feeling as somehow illogical, even embarrassing.
That route is a get-out for those who are not prepared to believe in the profundity of shared pain, and the enormous toll exacted by collective loss.