Chapter Twenty ‘The Unique, the Complex, the Extraordinary and Irreplaceable…’ #3
I remember when I suddenly got engaged to Victoria, my first wife, in 1989, following the mad spontaneity of one week’s dating. I introduced Diana and Jane to their soon-to-be sister-in-law in Jane’s home, near Kensington Palace.
My two sisters’ eyes danced with humour at the na?ve ridiculousness of the situation. Maybe it reminded Diana of her own rush to marriage. She had only met Prince Charles thirteen times before he had proposed to her, eight years earlier.
Whatever their understandable misgivings, my sisters were kind to us both, and openly supportive.
Diana even arranged for Victoria and me to go to Lambeth Palace several times over the following weeks, to talk to Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury – and the man who had conducted Diana’s wedding at St Paul’s – about what was entailed in marriage.
On our wedding day, Diana was among many who were shocked by Victoria’s gaunt appearance. ‘Carlos,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid your wife’s not at all well. She clearly has an eating disorder.’ I had had no idea that that was the case, but Diana knew the signs well.
When the marriage became untenable for me, it was in Diana that I confided.
She was entirely unsurprised: ‘But, of course, Carlos, it was always going to get to this point. What did you expect?’ She had long before spotted serious cracks in our union that, she said, were always going to get worse as time went on, ‘particularly after you had to take on the pressure of running Althorp. Victoria was never going to cope with that.’
Diana recommended that I talk to a therapist she rated. She told me his name – which was so strange that it must have been a pseudonym – and arranged for me to meet him for a series of discreet out of hours sessions in an office tucked away in the rafters of a Harley Street[*] address.
I told this complete stranger about the many issues I was facing in my marriage. He sat impassively till I finished my scene-setting, then fired back, ‘Well, this all has to end, of course. You have to accept that divorce is what lies ahead of you – and when you have, we can move ahead.’
He saw that I was astonished by his speedy conclusion.
‘Well, you have just told me that your marriage is – to all intents and purposes – dead, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘And when something is dead, what do you do?’
I looked blankly back.
‘You bury it!’ he replied. ‘As soon as possible. Because if you don’t, it’ll contaminate everything around it.’
We had three or four more sessions together, during which he gave me books on attachment and on co-dependency, and then this mysterious figure summoned up by my sister disappeared from my life.
Soon afterwards, I began the painful process of committing my marriage to the soil, as advised.
Diana remained supportive throughout, offering to speak up for me publicly at any court hearing if required.
She wanted me to have custody of my four children – perhaps remembering the stability my father had given us at Park House in our time.
When writing to thank me for a lunch I gave her at Althorp at this time, she said:
Darling Carlos,
On our return journey to London, William & I were lost for words as we both tried to imagine what it must be like to be in your situation which requires so much thought and balancing…You have had a great deal to carry on those shoulders.
During her visit, we had carved out a few moments to be together, so we could catch up on each other’s adult lives, away from our children’s ears.
‘I am thrilled to bits that your heart has a flutter,’ Diana added, referring to a potential girlfriend I had mentioned, ‘and therefore [you will have some] support.’ She then thanked me for agreeing to have William to stay at Althorp with me the following week: ‘I hope you find him good company!’ she joked, before signing off with:
Lots of love, & a million thanks for having us to lunch today,
Duch. x
Equally, she shared problems in her marriage.
One day, when Diana asked me at very short notice to join her for lunch, I suspected that she had something important to share with me.
We met at San Lorenzo, her favourite London restaurant.
Early on she looked down at the table and said, ‘Carlos, I’m going to get divorced. ’
I was silent for a moment. I had known things were bad, but not this bad.
‘Well, Duch,’ I carefully replied, ‘you of course have my full support…I know you’ll have thought this through. But my main worry is the public. I fear they won’t forgive you. They’ve bought into a fairytale, and I reckon they may well – wrongly – blame you for destroying their fantasy.’
She looked up at me, nodded, and as her huge, sad eyes locked on to mine, she said in a quiet voice: ‘But, Carlos, my husband is in love with his valet.’
I gulped. ‘Well, I guess, in that case, you really don’t have a choice.’
She did not name the member of staff, and I never asked her who it was, or why she would believe such an improbable thing. It was not important: the end of her marriage, and of her dreams, was.
That lunch was, I later saw, the flipside of the time a dozen years earlier, in Diana’s London flat when, curled up on her sofa in blissful anticipation of her life ahead, she had told me that she was engaged. Now, she was admitting out loud that those long-ago hopes were dead.
Skip Notes
* Harley Street is where many of London’s leading medical practices are based.