Chapter Twenty-Six ‘Our Chance to Say Thank You for the Way You Brightened Our Lives…’ #4
The astonishing beauty and strength of the performance seemed to offer some sort of rage against the unfairness of Diana being claimed by Death so young.
As the soloist’s voice soared through the Abbey, the choristers sounded as if they were pursuing it with low, demonic force. It was intensely moving.
Yet during ‘Libera Me’ I found – as so often during the service – that I could not stop my thoughts drifting away from the drama of this astonishing, global event to the tininess of our family upbringing in Norfolk.
I found myself thinking about one of my father’s favourite Park House anecdotes.
It related to my three sisters’ boarding-school years, as teenagers at West Heath.
My father – ever-present at his children’s school events – had been in the audience when the West Heath choir had performed Verdi’s Requiem in a joint concert with a nearby boys’ school.
A boy percussionist had to power in, after the silence some two and a half minutes into the full performance of ‘Libera Me’, with a thundering series of precise but rolling strikes of his timpani.
It was the instrumental highpoint of the piece, and the climax of his performance.
But either the poor boy’s concentration or his courage failed him.
Instead of providing the rousing, rumbling jolts where Verdi intended, he came crashing in at completely the wrong point, spectacularly disrupting the school concert.
As the musicians delivered the shortened form of the Responsory, I thought how my father would have approved of this favourite piece being included, and how (despite the utter ghastliness of the occasion) he might quietly have smiled at its nod to family folklore about how very badly things can go at the critical moment, when skill or nerve deserts you.
This dramatic section of Verdi’s Requiem was followed by another family reading. Our sister Jane, who had been such a quiet but stalwart support to Diana, read its five lines perfectly, in a still, clear, voice:
Time is too slow for those who wait,
Too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice,
But for those who love, time is eternity.
Again, that theme of love, so central to Diana’s life.
Love was reprised in the next part of the service, when the congregation joined in the hymn ‘The King Of Love My Shepherd Is’. The third verse, an acceptance of human failing, and a celebration of love’s healing power, seemed particularly resonant:
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love he sought me,
And on his shoulders gently laid,
And home rejoicing brought me.
Tony Blair’s lesson came next. It was known this would be a cornerstone of the ceremony, since Blair was still enjoying the honeymoon period with the British voters that had seen him elected prime minister in a landslide four months earlier.
I knew Diana had secretly met Blair a few times in the run-up to his recent triumph. She had realized – as was obvious – that Blair was going to win handsomely, and she saw the value of having the new prime minister’s blessing for her future work.
On the morning of Diana’s death, Blair had met with his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, mirroring the world’s astonishment at the news when saying, in total bewilderment: ‘I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it. You can’t just take it in, can you?’
Incredulity had been the common theme of world leaders at the time.
US President Bill Clinton said how ‘profoundly saddened’ he and his wife Hillary were, because they knew and were personally very fond of Diana.
He added how they also very much ‘…admired [her] for her work for children, for people with AIDS, for the cause of ending the scourge of landmines in the world and for her love for her children…’
President Mandela, remembering their recent meeting in Cape Town, talked of how enormously Diana’s loss would be felt by ‘her adoring fans’, and hailed her great popularity across Africa, particularly since she had started her campaign against landmines in Angola at the start of that year.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin registered his ‘deep shock’ and noted how Diana was ‘well known and loved by the Russian people’.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said: ‘Princess Diana in her official position and in a personal capacity has made an extraordinary contribution not only to her country but to the world.’
Blair had decided not to make an official public statement straight away, on the day Diana died – his spin doctor worried it would ‘look tacky’ – choosing instead to speak to the media in a more casual setting, outside his local church: ‘I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated. Our thoughts and prayers are with Princess Diana’s family… ’
He touched on the challenges that Diana had encountered since her separation: ‘We know how difficult things were for her from time to time. I am sure we can only guess that. But people everywhere, not just here in Britain, kept faith with Princess Diana.’
It was his concluding thought that summed up Diana so cleverly: ‘She was “the People’s Princess”, and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and our memories for ever.’
Privately, Blair had told his inner circle that Diana had managed to die at what was likely to have been the very height of her popularity.
If she had remarried and had another child, he said, she might have lost some of her perceived magic.
But dying when she did, Blair believed, she would for ever remain an icon.
He successfully nailed down Diana’s iconic status with his ‘People’s Princess’ epithet.
There had been questions, in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death, as to whether the prime minister should read a lesson at the funeral, while Prince Charles would not. But Diana’s Private Secretary, Michael Gibbins, was adamant that she would have wanted Blair to perform this task.
The prime minister’s lesson concluded with:
…And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
It was the delivery of Blair’s lesson, rather than its message, that was particularly interesting to me.
I noted – as I had not, at the rehearsal – quite how slowly he was delivering his reading.
I decided that, when my time came to speak, I must go at a similarly measured rate: although it sounded a little stilted at delivery, I noticed how the acoustics were unforgiving to any words with too much pace on them.
I was conscious that I had been given three minutes to speak, and I had written accordingly.
But I knew then that I had to go at the right speed, even if doing so would make me exceed my allotted time.
Skip Notes
*1 ‘6 September 1997’, by Ted Hughes
*2 The muffled Tenor Bell of Westminster Abbey was rung on the minute from 10 a.m.
*3 I later discovered this was Horse Guards Arch.