Diana in Search of Herself (47 page)

The nature of female friendship—offering emotional support, sharing experiences of children and husbands—was particularly important to
Diana. More than most women, Diana fit her friends—male and female—into specific categories. “
She was very clever to give roles to us,” Roberto Devorik said. There were holiday friends, companions to share giggles over lunch, friends who broadened her horizons, mothers with children the ages of her sons, soul mate friends, avuncular friends, fraternal friends, maternal figures, and friends outside her upper-class milieu. “
I was not on the same social circuit as other friends,” said Diana’s energy healer Simone Simmons. “There was no danger of me blurting out things to people to whom she might have been sending out different messages from her complicated private agenda.… She carved out a very precise box for me in her life.”

Diana’s maternal figures, who filled the gap created by her inconsistent relationship with her own mother, formed an especially influential group. Having an array of maternal figures was an arrangement that reflected Diana’s neediness as much as her power to command such a lineup. If one woman wasn’t available, Diana could always turn to another, or if one wasn’t listening carefully, Diana could find an alternative. “She was better behaved with the older women, probably because they were more patient with her,” a friend said. “It was more difficult with her contemporaries because they couldn’t give her that kind of attention.”

Diana’s collection of surrogate mothers emerged in the late eighties and early nineties, and included Annabel Goldsmith, Lucia Flecha de Lima, Hayat Palumbo, and Elsa Bowker—formidable women in their own right, but all living outside the conventional world in which Diana had been raised. They eclipsed Diana’s original maternal friend, Mara Berni, owner of the San Lorenzo restaurant. During the eighties, Mara had functioned as a spiritual counselor, giving Diana “
prophecies,” advice on her love life, and guidance about astrology and clairvoyance. Diana’s mother figures were anywhere from twenty to fifty years her senior; even within the maternal category, they occupied different niches.

Lucia Flecha de Lima was foremost among these maternal figures. The two women met during the Waleses’ tour of Brazil in April 1991, when Lucia was forty-nine and Diana twenty-nine. Afterward, Diana became a regular visitor at the Brazilian ambassador’s residence on Mount Street in London. One of nine children, Lucia was the beautiful, privileged daughter of an heiress and a doctor who specialized in tropical disease research. Diana once described Lucia as “
the mother I would have liked to have had.”

A mother of five and grandmother, Lucia pulled Diana into her lively family life; on a number of occasions, Diana joined them for Easter, Christmas, and Boxing Day when her sons were with Charles. One of Lucia’s daughters, Beatrice, became a close friend as well. “Diana loved going to their house and feeling the warmth of a close-knit family,” one of Diana’s friends said. Lucia was down-to-earth and nurturing, always a willing listener.
Since her own children were grown, she had the time to dedicate to Diana. “It required her to be there when Diana called, and to go to lunch when Diana called,” a friend said. The two women spoke at least once a day, even after the Flecha de Limas moved to the United States in November 1993.

As a Latin American, Lucia had a different sensibility from the British upper class that Diana found refreshing; for example, she was less judgmental about openly expressed emotion. Diana appreciated that Lucia was an outsider with no strong feelings for or against the royal family, but because Lucia didn’t completely understand the British mentality, her advice was sometimes limited. What Lucia gave Diana above all was unconditional love: Lucia voiced her opinions but didn’t press them; the two women argued from time to time, but Diana didn’t drop Lucia as she dropped so many others.

Annabel Goldsmith had solid credentials in the British establishment. The daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry, she had known both Frances and Johnnie in her youth. (In the hereditary peerage, a marquess ranks just below a duke, and one rung above Diana’s father, Earl Spencer.) Annabel’s friendship with Diana began the night of her party in 1989, when Diana confronted Camilla. Initially, Diana tried to pump Annabel about Camilla, but when Annabel offered scant information, Diana gave up. Although their relationship had a mother-daughter quality, it was more lighthearted than Diana’s friendship with Lucia. Annabel and Diana often met over lunch, and laughter was “
the essential ingredient in our relationship,” Annabel wrote in the
Daily Mail
after Diana’s death.

Once or twice a month, Diana went to the Goldsmith home on the outskirts of London for Sunday lunch. She would call on Saturday and inquire, “Is the madhouse on?” Like the Flecha de Limas, the Goldsmiths offered Diana a family atmosphere. Diana frequently brought her sons, who enjoyed the Goldsmith children.

Although Annabel came from Diana’s aristocratic milieu, she was not establishment in her outlook, and her husband, Jimmy, the iconoclastic billionaire businessman, was profoundly antiestablishment.
The family was also decidedly unconventional: Jimmy and Annabel shared a life in England, and he openly lived with a mistress (by whom he had two children) in France. On the other side of Goldsmith’s Parisian house lived his first wife. This combination of familiar and daring enabled Diana to unwind at the Goldsmiths’ more completely than anywhere else.

“
At lunch at Annabel’s, Diana was at her most relaxed and giggly,” said Cosima Somerset. The Princess would tell stories, joke with the staff, swim in the pool, and help wash the dishes. In quieter moments, Annabel listened to Diana’s laments, yet Diana was reluctant to admit her deepest insecurities
to Annabel. “She minded what Annabel thought of her,” a friend said. “She was like a child who wanted to be seen at her best, without a flaw.”

Elsa Bowker was the oldest of Diana’s surrogate mothers—into her eighties when they met in 1993. Her cosmopolitan background appealed to Diana much as Lucia’s did. Elsa was born in Egypt to a French mother and Lebanese father. After World War II, she married Christopher Bowker, a British diplomat, and they lived in Burma, France, Germany, and Spain before returning to Britain. “
She liked my way of living, my experience, and she could tell me everything,” Elsa said. “She became more and more affectionate. She treated me as a mother that she did not have. She told me she didn’t understand her mother.” A friend of Elsa’s called her a “wise old bird,” and added, “She gave Diana a lot of advice, although I’m not sure she took any of it.”

Elsa did her best to reassure Diana, but felt powerless when Diana was distraught. “
To be her friend was difficult,” Elsa recalled. “In my case, when she wanted to see me eagerly, I had to abandon everything. Once I put my foot down, and she came three hours later.” While Elsa felt great affection for Diana, she considered her “unbalanced” after witnessing her extremes of mood, and she was uncertain what to believe. “Sometimes I would see her face when she was telling me this or that, and I would say, ‘Is that the truth?’ It wasn’t always. She was frightened of what one would do to her if she told the truth. You could tell when she wasn’t [telling the truth] by the way she looked and the way she remained silent.”

Diana came to know Hayat Palumbo through her husband, Peter, the multimillionaire chairman of the Arts Council of England.
Like Elsa, Hayat was from the Middle East, a Lebanese whose father was a Shiite Moslem and owned a newspaper in Beirut. When Hayat was sixteen, her father was assassinated by terrorists. Before meeting the widowed Palumbo in the 1980s, Hayat had been unhappily married to a wealthy Lebanese businessman. Although Hayat was only a decade older than Diana, she assumed a maternal role, and her husband took a paternal interest. “Hayat is very clever, full of experience, very artistic,” a friend said of her. “She is strong, but her life has made her harder.”

The Palumbos shared the trappings of their wealth with Diana, flying her in their private jet, entertaining her on their yacht
Drumbeat
, and at their homes in England and France. Peter Palumbo put Diana in contact with the prestigious lawyer Lord Mishcon, whose firm took over her divorce negotiations, as well as Gordon Reece, a public relations adviser who tried to help Diana. Not incidentally, Palumbo was an erstwhile friend of Prince Charles, who had sabotaged one of Palumbo’s ambitious development projects with his savage architectural criticism, calling it a “
glass
stump.” “
Peter took the approach, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ and went straight to Diana,” said gossip columnist Nigel Dempster.

It was Lucia Flecha de Lima who introduced Diana to Rosa Monckton, the managing director of Tiffany’s in London. Lucia’s daughter Beatrice worked for Tiffany’s, and the Flecha de Limas shared with Rosa a devout Catholicism. This religious connection was enough to set off a wave of press speculation (
PALACE
DENIES SPIRITUAL CRISIS
) in 1993 that Diana might convert to the Catholic faith. Close friends said that Diana didn’t consider conversion, but she was attracted to the good works of Catholic humanitarians such as Mother Teresa and Britain’s Cardinal Basil Hume, both of whom she met with on a number of occasions.

The daughter of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Rosa had a unique perspective on royal crises. Her grandfather, Walter Monckton, had been a close friend and legal adviser to King Edward VIII. When the King abdicated in 1936 to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson, Monckton helped write the King’s famous speech renouncing the throne for “the woman I love.” Rosa was also married to Dominic Lawson, editor of
The Spectator
and later
The Sunday Telegraph
, a relationship that sometimes circumscribed Diana’s conversations with Rosa, but that proved an advantage at other times. Strong and articulate, Rosa served as a sounding board for Diana, who occasionally took offense at Rosa’s advice. After the disastrous Korea trip in November 1992, Rosa rebuked Diana for “
her sulky public behavior,” and Diana didn’t call her for four months. Like other friends, Rosa was someone Diana could call and “
simply cry [until she was] totally drained and completely exhausted.” As a friend of Prince Charles said, “Rosa was tough-minded and analytical about Diana, but entirely devoted to her nevertheless.”

Diana and Rosa were closest when Rosa miscarried, then subsequently gave birth to a daughter named Domenica who had Down’s syndrome. Rosa recalled that Diana was “
compassionate and practical” in the extensive help she gave her and her daughter. “Diana was there for her,” a friend of Rosa said. “Diana got some kind of strength from that.” Diana offered to be Domenica’s godmother, which led to another brief falling-out when Rosa invited photographers from
Hello!
magazine to the christening. Whenever anyone seemed to be exploiting a friendship with her, Diana took it as betrayal. “Diana was very angry about that; I don’t know how Rosa could have made that mistake,” another friend said. The two women repaired the relationship, but the episode left Diana uneasy.

Another friend sometimes identified as a maternal presence was Marguerite Littman, probably because she was of the same generation as Diana’s own mother.
The Louisiana-born wife of an English barrister,
Marguerite founded the AIDS Crisis Trust and met Diana through Adrian Ward-Jackson, vice chairman of the trust. “
I would have loved to have been a mother figure,” Marguerite said. “But we were much more like playmates.” Known for her droll humor and numerous connections in Hollywood (where she lived in the fifties while coaching actors in Southern dialect), New York, and London, Marguerite often had lunch with Diana at Harry’s Bar, Kensington Palace, or Marguerite’s home in fashionable Chester Square.

“
I deliberately didn’t get into situations where she would ask me for advice,” Littman said. “She would confide in me about little things, but she had enough people to confide in. You end up resenting people you confide in, because it gives them power. She told me her opinions of people, which was much more dangerous. That kind of thing she trusted me with. When I was with her, I liked everything to be as light as I could make it. If I had anything to tell about myself, it would have weighed on her. We were having a good time, talking about serious things but keeping it light.”

These new friends of Diana’s overshadowed the “girlfriends” she had met in the mid-eighties—Kate Menzies, Catherine Soames, and Julia Samuel. After the separation was announced, it was Catherine and her son Harry who joined Diana and her two boys on the Caribbean island of Nevis. Catherine, an heiress whose family controlled the Hong Kong-based Jardine Matheson Holdings, a multinational conglomerate, was the former wife of Nicholas Soames, Charles’s friend whom Diana disliked. Diana skied each spring in Lech, Austria, with Catherine and Kate, and vacationed at the home of Kate’s parents in exclusive Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. Kate was also from a wealthy family whose fortune was built on a network of newsstands.

“Diana was terribly giggly with Catherine and Kate,” a friend said. “They talked in little innuendos and private jokes and shorthand.” They even gave Diana a new nickname: “Princhey.” “Originally everyone called her Duch, so Princhey was an upgrade,” a friend explained. Since both Kate and Catherine were independently wealthy, they were less deferential than they might otherwise have been. “They didn’t want to be ladies-in-waiting to Diana,” another friend said. Although Julia Samuel was known for her lively parties, her relationship with Diana had a more serious cast,
since she had trained as a therapist. “Julia was a helping sort, a great listener, who[m] Diana gravitated to,” a friend of Diana’s said.

Diana also had a group of male friends who played specific parts. One avuncular friend described himself from Diana’s viewpoint as “an old fart who was open-minded.” They teased each other, and he felt a duty to “cheer her up.” In later years, he gave her advice, which she declined to take,
and he noticed a pattern to their friendship: “You could tell when she was up to something. You wouldn’t hear from her. I would hear from her in between, when she was under pressure.”