A Journey (27 page)

For Prince Charles, it was really ghastly. He and Camilla were an obvious focus of intense interest and speculation. What could he do? Appear grief-stricken and he would be called a fraud. Appear calm and he would seem cold. It was an impossible situation, his every gesture interpreted or more likely misinterpreted, and people ready to pounce on any slip.

In this extraordinary, challenging time, his relationship with the boys rescued him. At that point I hadn’t really seen them together, but as I saw more of them later, I realised that the relationship was close and deeply affectionate on both sides. Not surprisingly, since they were father and sons, you might say; but back then there were plenty of people who assumed that the strain between husband and wife had been transferred to father and sons. However, it wasn’t so, and as the days wore on it became clearer, significantly easing the pressure on Prince Charles.

I had got to know him quite well before coming to office. He had made it his business to acquaint himself with leading members of what was likely to be the governing party. He was a curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour; at another, definitely not), and of the princely and the insecure. He led a life in which naturally people deferred to him, and you wouldn’t describe him as easy-going, certainly not in the way Diana was, but he was also sensitive to criticism and nervous about the public reaction to him.

I could never imagine him sitting in Maggie Rae’s basement dining room in her terrace house in Hackney as Diana had, joshing with the other guests, everyone on first-name terms and beguiled into more or less complete informality. On the other hand, he had and has one very major and, to me, transcendent quality: he is enormously and sincerely committed. He does not sit on his backside biding his time until the moment of coronation comes. He genuinely cares about the causes he takes up, but more than that, he identifies with them. He thinks about them deeply. And in his own funny way, when you get to know him better, he is less
de haut en bas
than many junior and transient heads of state. Probably he underestimates how much the public – now more than then – get him and are comfortable with him. They can smirk at the tree-hugging, talking-to-flowers business, and they can find it weird and unnatural when he refuses to play the game by their rules (as in that extraordinary moment when he and Diana had just become engaged and he was asked whether he loved her and said, ‘Yes, whatever “love” means’), but they also know he does good work, believes in his duty to them and has commitment. That counts for a lot.

Towards the end of the second term, I was asked to advise on whether he and Camilla could or should get married. The scars of the Diana business were deep and lasting. It is fair to say that the Palace had become understandably neuralgic about anything that touched on it. I immediately said I thought it would be fine. They love each other; why not? Or are we really saying it’s better they don’t marry, as if marriage was somehow an insult? And by and large it was fine. There was, and from time to time still is, a media desire to go after and demonise Camilla, but the public have sussed her out too. They understand she is an uncomplicated, down-to-earth person who happens to love him. Is she Diana? No. Does she pretend to be? No. So let them get on with it. Now we are more sympathetic, more perceptive of the fact that the royals are both different and the same. In some ways, the furore around Diana’s death was the point at which things turned. People not only felt the monarchy had taken a further and necessary step towards being more open to public opinion, but they also saw the human frailty and strength of its leading representatives and accepted both equally. The monarchy realised it could open up while remaining royal.

But during those days, it certainly felt touch-and-go. As the Queen stayed up in Balmoral and London became the capital of mourning for the world, the gulf between monarch and subjects became wider. Alastair and Anji had been inserted into the committee established by the Palace to handle the funeral and keep on top of the ‘situation’ as it was unfolding. Both were evidently being of huge benefit to a machine not unnaturally struggling with the enormity of it all. Alastair was also guiding the press while alive to accusations of manipulating them, though frankly in crises like this, the difference between the two is hard to spot. I wanted Anji in there because I knew that whereas Alastair would take a tabloid view of what needed to be done, she would speak for her very correct brand of Middle England. Between them, we had a chance to get the balance right. Some of the court were suspicious of such ‘interference’, but most thought it practical and Robert Fellowes in particular insisted on it.

The funeral to be held the following Saturday was the main topic of debate. It had to be dignified; it had to be different; and it had to be Diana. There were endless discussions of the precise numbers of each category of people to be invited, the order of service and the role of Diana’s family. Her brother Charles Spencer was a very strong and assertive character who felt extremely angry at the way she had been treated, certainly by the media and possibly by the royal family. Each decision was highly sensitive with multiple pros and cons, each had been worked and reworked. There was a big debate about whether the boys should walk behind the cortège with Prince Charles, and concern about the differing possible public reactions to him and to them.

Most of all, pressure was mounting on the Queen. I went out on the Wednesday and did a doorstep, supporting her strongly and asking for understanding that the priority was the children, as it should be. However, the fact that I was speaking only served to emphasise the fact that she wasn’t. Indeed, if I hadn’t spoken on the Sunday and during the week that followed, literally no one in any position of authority would have been speaking. How bizarre would that have been, given this was the only news worldwide? Meanwhile, though Alastair and Anji were more or less working full-time on this, I was having to attend to government matters. We were cranking up the Northern Ireland business to get to a ceasefire by the IRA, and that was taking time; I had a major speech to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) the next week; there was a big education summit at Downing Street on the Thursday; and of course throughout I was taking calls from world leaders who rang to express their condolences.

On Wednesday afternoon, I decided to call Prince Charles. Part of my problem with the Queen was that there was no easy point of connection in age, or outlook, or acquaintance. I respected her and was a little in awe of her, but as a new prime minister I didn’t know her, or how she would take the very direct advice that I now felt I had to give her. I totally understood how she looked at the whole thing and sympathised, but you didn’t have to be a political genius to work out that this was a tide that had to be channelled. It couldn’t be turned back, resisted or ignored. I didn’t trust myself fully to go straight to her and be as blunt as I needed to be. So I went to Charles.

I called him from the den at Downing Street and realised straight away it had been the right thing to do. He was clearly of completely the same mind. The Queen had to speak; the royal family had to be visible. However tough it was for him personally, for all the obvious reasons, he and the boys couldn’t hide away. They had to come to London to respond to the public outpouring. I was extraordinarily relieved. He agreed to take the message back. By the next day, Thursday, it was clear there would be a broadcast by the Queen herself. Alastair was able to steer the journalists gently on to that track, and almost immediately the tension started to dissipate and you could feel people moving back towards her.

At the Queen’s request I called her on Thursday lunchtime, and we spoke about what would happen the next day and how it would be managed. She was now very focused and totally persuaded. It wasn’t easy, but it was certain. The following day, the Queen, Charles and the boys visited the front of Buckingham Palace, which had turned into a shrine. There were some last-minute discussions about her precise words, but it was plain from the language and tone that once she had decided to move, she moved with considerable skill. The broadcast was near perfect. She managed to be a queen and a grandmother at one and the same time.

I had spoken to Prince Charles again and we had gone through the arrangements for the funeral one last time. The Palace had asked me to read a lesson. It was a mark of how pivotal my role had been through the week, but I also knew it would lead to a charge of ‘muscling in’. Indeed, throughout, we were walking a tightrope, thinner and more frayed by the day, between organising everything to go well and ‘cashing in’ or exploiting. And that was in those halcyon days; heaven knows what would have happened had Diana died some years later . . .

The funeral was all we could have hoped for. It was unusual – Elton John singing ‘Candle In The Wind’, and doing it rather brilliantly – but it was also in keeping with Westminster Abbey. Charles Spencer made a strong attack on the press (I said to Alastair, mark my words, they will wait for the chance for revenge, and if it comes they will seize it savagely). There was also something of a rebuke to the royal family, but his speech was powerful and would reverberate.

I gave lunch to a huge assortment of kings, queens, heads of state and dignitaries. Hillary Clinton came, representing the USA, and as ever it was good to see her. The scale of the whole affair was gigantic. On occasions like these, I tended to shut off from everything around and just concentrate on doing it. I was always glad when they were over.

The next day I did
Frost
– which went fine – and then went to Balmoral for the traditional weekend, except that this time, of course, it was anything but the run-of-the-mill visit.

Balmoral Castle was built in the 1840s by Prince Albert for his wife and queen, situated between the villages of Ballater and Braemar. It is magnificent, the grounds simply stunning, and although the September weather is normally awful up there, it can be quite pleasant. On a sunny day, there is no more beautiful part of the world than that part of Scotland. The castle itself is very Victorian. There are no huge chambers or halls, the rooms are of moderate size, and some of the toilets are still the old water closets; not many are en suite, as they say.

I have to say I found the experience of visiting and spending the weekend a vivid combination of the intriguing, the surreal and the utterly freaky. The whole culture of it was totally alien of course, not that the royals weren’t very welcoming. But I never did ‘country house’ or ‘stately home’ weekends and had a bit of a horror of the notion.

The walls are hung with Landseer pictures of stags, scenes of hunting and of course Queen Victoria’s Mr Brown. There are footmen – in fact very nice guys, but still footmen. When I arrived for the first time on that Sunday, the valet – yes, you got your own valet – asked me if he could fold my clothes and generally iron the underpants and that type of thing, and so disconcerted me that when he then asked me if he could ‘draw the bath’, I lost the thread completely and actually thought for a moment he wanted to sketch the damn thing. Using the bathroom on the other side of the corridor was a singular act of courage, sneaking open the bedroom door, glancing right and left and then making for it at speed.

There was a routine to everything. There was a proper afternoon tea, and the Queen would pour with, needless to say, a proper strainer, and a kettle was kept bubbling away so that the pot could be filled up. Breakfast was likewise straight out of Trollope, or, perhaps better, Walter Scott. Eggs, bacon, sausage, kidneys, tomatoes, kedgeree and kippers, all kept on a hotplate. Breakfast was huge. Lunch was huge. Dinner was huge. If you indulged thoroughly, you could have put on a stone in a weekend, but the royals never did. I always noticed that they ate very little.

The blessing was the stiff drink you could get before dinner. Had it been a dry event, had the Queen been a teetotaller or a temperance fanatic, I don’t believe I could have got through the weekend. But this stuff – I was never quite sure what it was – was absolutely what was needed. It hit the spot. It was true rocket fuel. The burden and the head got lighter. The courage returned. The easy conversational intercourse with the royal family seemed entirely natural. The first two annual visits were, nevertheless, trying at all levels.

The second weekend, in 1998, was the anniversary of Diana’s death and there was a service at Crathie where, on this occasion, the whole royal family was assembled, the only time in my experience it ever happened. Individually, it can be a little nerve-racking to be with them; en masse, all of them and just Cherie and me, well, you can imagine. Cherie had suggested we bring Euan, Nicky and Kathryn, at which I laughed hysterically and said on no account. Euan, for one, had a near-genius capacity for winding people up, as with his constant questions to Cherie about women’s equality, a bait to which she always rose. The blood froze at the thought of what he would say to the Queen, let alone the Queen Mother who was also there.

Later, we went for the traditional barbecue that Prince Philip cooks, held in one of the estate cottages. This, too, is governed by convention and tradition. The royals cook, and serve the guests. They do the washing-up. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. They put the gloves on and stick their hands in the sink. You sit there having eaten, the Queen asks if you’ve finished, she stacks the plates up and goes off to the sink.

I had also spoken to William, who was not only still grieving but angry. He knew, rationally, why the week between Diana’s death and the funeral had to be as it had been, but he felt acutely the conflict between public position and private emotion. He knew now, if he didn’t before, what being a prince and a king meant. For all the sense of duty, the prison walls of hereditary tradition must have seemed too high a price to pay.