Chapter Twenty-Nine ‘These Were Days I Will Always Treasure’ #2
I can never forget that duo’s swift, disbelieving glance at one another, followed by leering, wolfish grins.
In that moment they felt sure they were about to bank a fat cheque for the shots that they would soon secure – this, when they knew they had no competitors in sight, to share in their rich prize.
The one at the wheel yanked hard, spinning their vehicle round to pursue us.
It was immediately clear to me that their slick sedan could outrun my pickup. When they got too close, almost ramming us from the rear, I turned to Diana and said: ‘Sorry, Duch. This is too effing dangerous – we’re turning back.’ She nodded in agreement.
Local knowledge gave me the edge in the chase, and I managed to shake off their reckless pursuit by dodging down a side street that they overran at speed.
My sister and I then silently headed home, via the secret side entrance, shaken but in one piece.
That was the nearest the paparazzi came to getting us, and they failed.
The Mercury, a venerable South African paper, reported during the early part of Diana’s visit: ‘Earl Spencer, who lives in Constantia, has kept the media at bay since [the princess’s] arrival.’ This would remain the case throughout, except for one memorable encounter.
It came about after Diana mused aloud, while picking raisins out of the jar of muesli in my kitchen one morning: ‘You know, I’d really love to meet Nelson Mandela one day…’
‘Well, I’m pretty sure I can help with that,’ I said. I was about to become a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and knew people close to the president. I made some initial calls to establish if the president was even in Cape Town.
A friend at the British High Consulate confirmed that the great man was indeed in his residence nearby. When I explained that Diana was keen to meet him, this contact was so excited at the prospect that he immediately called Mr Mandela’s team.
The president was as eager as Diana to meet, and they got together later that day, Diana in a simple polka dot dress, Mr Mandela in one of his loose-fitting silk ‘Madiba’[*] shirts.
From their photographs together – laughing loudly, holding and shaking hands – it was evident that Mr Mandela was completely charmed by Diana: he hailed her a ‘beauty-princess’, and praised her work.
When journalists called out for the president to kiss her, he laughed off the suggestion, saying, ‘That would be treason!’ Pointing to the evident excitement of those witnessing the meeting, Mr Mandela, with his customary modest charm, said to Diana, ‘You can see how popular you are!’ She, for her part, told onlookers that she was ‘absolutely thrilled’ at the meeting.
Diana immediately grasped the enormous potential that lay in her and Nelson Mandela working in unison on philanthropic causes.
She was savvy enough to see that the president and the princess could achieve even greater things together in the charitable sphere than they could alone.
They were two of the most revered figures alive.
The project they alighted on at this initial meeting was how they should join forces to tackle AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Many other campaigns would surely have followed, had she lived.
The evening of her meeting with Mandela, back at my house, Diana told me how thrilling it was that she could get on with her work without any more interference from Buckingham Palace or British politicians.
After a decade and a half of constraint at home, driven by the envious, the suspicious and the sourly disapproving, Diana felt she was now free to be an independent, international, force.
She was happy to ally with Mandela, knowing that nobody could destroy the halo that he would throw around their joint philanthropic enterprises, and nobody could emulate their joint appeal.
That this powerful alliance was never to materialize joins the long list of reasons why Diana’s early death was a tragedy.
Apart from making the meeting with Mr Mandela come about, the only other practical help I had been able to offer Diana during her visit had been professional.
She told me she intended to travel to Cambodia to campaign against the millions of landmines there, which were claiming countless innocent victims.
She said she did not want to do this with a news network in tow, preferring to have her own team record the visit in a way that was true to her message and intention.
I said I could help put a proper production team together, top people from Britain and the US that my TV contacts could recommend, and she was grateful, saying I must oversee the report.
I noted this down as something to look at in the future, if Diana remained keen on the idea, while turning my attention back to the task in hand: keeping my sister safe under my roof, while the press continued their encirclement.
When Diana left, after those few days in my care, it had been an awkward parting. She was headed back to her life of global fame and obvious inner turmoil, while I was set to resume my simple life of semi-exile the other side of the world.
Diana had spent her waking hours at my home with her mobile in her hand, constantly waiting for the man in her life to call. And, to her obvious distress, he rarely had.
Meanwhile, there had been many signs that her eating disorder was present – not only unconquered but rampant. When I asked her about it, in a sympathetic way, she was defensive, insisting that any issues she had with food were safely in the past. I knew that was not the truth.
I thought, as we kissed one another goodbye at Cape Town airport, how deeply unhappy she was, and how I really had not been able to help her much with that.
It was a profoundly sad realization then, and is heartbreaking for me now.
Skip Notes
* ‘Madiba’ was a respectful name by which Mr Mandela was widely known in South Africa. It is a reference to the Thembu clan that he and his family belonged to.