Harry (8 page)

That was it, Charles decided. He’d had enough of her
game-playing
and it was time to call it quits publicly. He informed his mother but, at the time, she was distraught by the millions of pounds’ worth of damage caused by the fire that had
devastated
large sections of Windsor Castle. Its most ancient parts built by William the Conqueror in 1066, it was the favourite of her residences and had been in constant use throughout the ages. Diana and her tantrums would have to wait.

But not for long.

I
n 1992, Harry Wales was already at his desk for the
morning’s
school work at Ludgrove when he was told his mother was on her way to see him. Fellow boarder William had already been informed. This was serious. Diana never paid them surprise visits. Both boys were already waiting in a private study room when the Princess arrived. She was nervous and constantly stroked her handbag arm as she waited for the master who had conducted her to the room to excuse himself and leave, firmly closing the door behind him.

She began by telling her sons that there was to be an announcement the following day, a very sad announcement. The Prime Minister was to inform Parliament and thereby the nation that she and their father were going their separate ways. The dream marriage was over.

Though it did not come altogether as a surprise, William took the news badly. He cried and promised her his undying support and Diana cried too, assuring him that despite their differences she and her father still loved each other.
Always the more soft-hearted of the two, in a way William became her partner in sadness, and it has to be said that she unloaded her troubles on him somewhat, which surely did the boy no favours. When she told him that she expected to be stripped of the ‘Her Royal Highness’ tag once the marriage was officially ended, more tears poured down his cheeks as he told her, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy, I’ll get it back for you when I am king.’ Harry didn’t care too much about such things. He recalls his mother saying that when the Duke of Edinburgh once told her that if she didn’t behave they would remove her title, she had replied, ‘My title is a lot older than yours, Philip.’

As a measure of his love for a woman he called his ‘second Mum’, Harry went to his room, sat down at his desk and wrote a heart-breaking letter to the nanny he called Granny Nanny – Olga Powell – explaining to her in the straightforward manner that was becoming his style, what was going on. Not a woman known to shed tears easily, Mrs Powell said she wept for a day when she received the letter and never failed to cry when she read it again and again.

Despite his tender age, Harry was far more philosophical about the situation than his brother. As Paul Burrell puts it, ‘he was far more outgoing and pragmatic’. Diana wasted no opportunity to tell her friends at the height of her troubles that Harry would see no problem in ‘taking on the job’ and that she considered her younger son was far more suitable to be king than the elder one. Having named him Good King Harry, in order to placate a young boy envious of his brother’s ultimate destiny, she was now suggesting that he
actually should become monarch. He was strong enough, she felt, to cope with the traumatic episode that was about to affect all of their lives. William, she feared, would be damaged by it, perhaps for life: ‘[William] doesn’t want to be king and I worry about that. He doesn’t want his every move watched,’ she said. During a flight home from visiting soldiers in Germany, one seated close to them says he clearly heard Diana ask Harry how he would feel if he had to take William’s place and be the next king. After a few moments of uncharacteristic deep thinking, the young Prince replied, ‘I shall be King Harry. I shall do all the work.’

Proving the stronger of the two in many respects, Harry asked Charles repeatedly if there was anything he could do to ‘make Mummy and Daddy happy again’ even though Diana had told him as well as others that there were times when she could not even bear to be in the same room as his father.

So that they could see the confirmation of the end of their parents’ relationship for themselves, Harry and William were asked to join their headmaster Gerald Barber in his study to watch the then Prime Minister John Major announce the couple’s official separation to a hushed House of Commons on 9 December 1992. Diana, who remained indoors at Kensington Palace that day, smiled when she heard Major deny there was any plan for them to divorce since she and Charles had already decided dissolution was inevitable once the public had accepted that they were no longer living together. Diana was furious, however, when she learned that Charles had gone alone to see the Prime Minister
to discuss the divorce; he was in fact following protocol to resolve constitutional issues which did not affect his wife. (Diana later complained that Major offered her
ambassadorships
by way of consolation, but always failed to deliver; she had been inspired by the good works being done by then President Clinton’s wife Hillary, with whom she lunched at the Washington home of Katharine Graham in 1994.)

In truth, both boys had come to realise that the end was near when Charles and Diana whisked them off for what turned out to be a disastrous cruise on a yacht belonging to the self-made (and generous) Greek shipping billionaire John Latsis, a man who had befriended Charles many years earlier. It was far from a happy holiday. Diana had gone only under duress, having given in to a plea from the Queen to give the marriage one last try. But such was the depth of her anguish that after one blazing row with her husband she went
missing
, sparking fears she might have jumped overboard. It was Ken Wharfe who found her hiding under the tarpaulin cover of one of the ship’s lifeboats. She was weeping uncontrollably and it took Wharfe some time and many consoling words to persuade her that Harry and William needed her even if her husband didn’t. Suicide was not an option. Made aware of what had happened, William took himself to an area of the ship where he could be alone; it was Harry who gave her strong comfort and did his best to assure her that he hoped they could still be a family.

Harry telephoned his mother three days after the parliamentary announcement and asked her if she would come
back to Ludgrove to have tea with him and William. To his delight she agreed and took the opportunity to meet with their teachers to talk about something other than separation and divorce – their educational performance. To her
disappointment
she learned that, despite his brilliant start at the school, Harry had begun to slip back, showing little interest in several of the subjects he was being taught. She took her son to one side and told him that they still had more, much more, than most people. Determined to prove her point she subsequently took them to a shelter in Westminster to which she was in the habit of paying unpublicised visits. Sister Bridie Dowd took them through to meet a number of the homeless men who took refuge there. The boys stayed for almost two hours talking to their new ‘friends’ – one of whom showed them some card tricks – and they promised to call again. Diana’s experiment to show her sons that the rich and famous they mixed with were only a small proportion of the world’s population had worked and they never forgot it.

Harry, more than William, quickly grew to accept his family’s situation and in many ways maintained an even closer relationship with his mother than he had prior to the break-up of her marriage. During the Christmas of 1993, he and William had a party at Bill Wyman’s Sticky Fingers restaurant on Kensington High Street. Using his mobile phone Harry called Diana to say what fun they were having. She was attending with Charles (although neither spoke to the other) the annual Kensington Palace staff Christmas dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. Before Harry was halfway
through telling her what he had phoned to say, she said, ‘Stay there, I’ll be right over,’ and immediately left the grand restaurant to be where she knew she would be more welcome and wanted – the former Rolling Stone’s burger bar on the other side of the West End.

She fought hard to have Harry and William stay with her at Kensington Palace for Christmas but her in-laws would not hear of it. The young princes had to join the traditional royal celebrations at Sandringham but although William knew the Queen had to be obeyed, Harry tried to defy the royal decree and urged his mother to go ahead with her yuletide plans – she had already bought tickets for the three of them to go to the pantomime at the London Palladium. By now under severe pressure, she agreed to go to Sandringham but stayed just twenty-four hours before flying to New York where, she said, the people were more friendly. Harry was desperate to go with her but she was obliged to leave him with his father for the rest of the holiday. Two days after Christmas he went missing and was eventually found in a wood on the Sandringham estate. Between sobs he told the estate worker who found him that he was missing his mother.

One of the more controversial developments of the split was that Charles hired, at a salary of £18,000 a year, a new nanny for the boys while they were in his care – 27-year-old Alexandra Legge-Bourke (known as Tiggy), the daughter of a former Royal Guards officer turned merchant banker, William Legge-Bourke. Her mother, the Hon. Shân Legge-Bourke, was, along with her sister Victoria, lady-in-waiting
to Princess Anne. This was no motherly Cockney
professional
child minder who liked a tipple, but an aristocrat in her own right who could and would stand up to Diana – they had both learned the rules of life at the same Swiss
finishing
school (Institut Alpin Videmanette). In turn Diana insisted on retaining Olga Powell for when the boys were with her. The Princess was never fond of Tiggy and found every opportunity to criticise her – not least when she learned that the new helper had allowed Harry puffs on the cigarettes she constantly smoked in his presence. When she saw a photograph taken on the ski slopes of Klosters of Charles giving Miss Legge-Bourke (whom he had known for many years) an affectionate kiss, she told a friend: ‘Huh, he’s never been known to kiss Olga.’ That single kiss led to a rancorous feud between the two women. It began with gentle mocking. Diana told Harry: ‘You know why she’s called Tiggy, don’t you? It’s after the Mrs Tiggy-Winkle character invented by Beatrix Potter. Isn’t that funny?’

It got worse, much worse. Coming from a rich land-owning family, Legge-Bourke was reported as saying she gave them, ‘What they need at this stage – fresh air, a rifle and a horse. She [Diana] gives them a tennis racket and a bucket of popcorn at the movies.’ According to Diana, the nanny her husband had hired against her wishes took the princes on a two-day visit to her parents’ home in Wales. During the trip she took them to the Grwyne Fawr
reservoir
in Monmouthshire, allowing Harry to abseil without protective headgear, any advanced training or even the
necessary permit, headfirst down the 160-foot dam wall that was holding back 400 million gallons of water. The incident was photographed by a passer-by and his picture ended up on the front page of the
News of the World
under the headline madness! Another photograph circulating at the time showed Harry on the Queen’s Balmoral estate shooting rabbits through the open roof of a moving car with Tiggy at the wheel, a cigarette dangling from her lips. One report Diana received suggested that Harry had been seen driving down the lanes of Balmoral with Tiggy smoking in the back seat, but the Princess could not prove this. Furthermore, she was speechless when she learned from Ken Wharfe – who severely admonished the boy for the offence – that during a scheduled flight Harry had placed his hand down Tiggy’s top to touch her breasts. It didn’t help matters when Diana was assured that Tiggy had laughed it off, saying: ‘Boys will be boys; I suppose he’s got to learn.’

That incident actually caused a blistering row between Tiggy and her normally supportive employer, Prince Charles. Although hurt, she soon recovered whereas Harry was angry at his father for ‘picking on her’ and refused to talk to him for days.

Under Tiggy’s free-spirited guidance, Harry became even louder and more self-confident while William retreated further into his shell. Harry and Tiggy would have pillow fights and engage in mock battles on the sofa. This woman was fun and despite his young age Harry clearly had a crush on her. He did everything he could to impress Tiggy
which was just what Charles had wished for when he told her that he wanted them to enjoy their young lives in a way that he had never been allowed to, although he did warn her to be cautious when anyone likely to report back to Diana was around.

And what a sound piece of advice that turned out to be for when she saw, or at least thought, that she was losing her sons – especially Harry – to the boisterous, fun-loving, if slightly unorthodox, Sloane, Diana reportedly composed a set of rules: ‘Miss Legge-Bourke will not spend unnecessary time in the children’s rooms. She may not read to them at night, nor
supervise
their bath time or bedtime. She is to carry out a secretarial role in the arrangement of their time with their father [and] that is all.’ In another she instructed: ‘Miss Legge-Bourke is to stay in the background on any occasion when the boys are seen in public. She is neither to be seen with them in the same car, nor to be photographed close to them.’ Apparently Charles told Tiggy to ignore the eccentric instructions.

But it was that ski-slope kiss in 1995 that festered in Diana. She became convinced that the new royal employee was having an affair with the man she was still married to – a view confirmed in her mind when she saw Tiggy wearing a diamond fleur-de-lis brooch of the kind that Charles had given to previous girlfriends. Diana had one herself. Things came to a head at the Christmas party for St James’s Palace staff in the Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner. Flushed with the success of a trip to New York where she had received the Humanitarian of the Year award from the United Cerebral
Palsy Foundation and made a triumphant speech declaring ‘Today is the day of compassion’, she bore down on Tiggy and said in as sarcastic a voice as anyone can remember her ever using: ‘Hello Tiggy, how are you? So sorry to hear about the baby.’ The insulted nanny fled the room in tears and returned to the safety of Kensington Palace where she could be with Harry and William.

The implication that Tiggy – who Diana referred to as ‘the woman who looks like a man’ – had aborted a child fathered by the heir to the throne was a serious sign that Diana was losing it. As for Tiggy, the following morning she decided she had had enough: she instructed libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck to write to the Princess’s law firm, Mishcon de Reya, accusing her of circulating ‘malicious lies which are a gross reflection on our client’s moral character’. The Queen’s private secretary Robert Fellowes wrote to Diana telling her that the allegations against Tiggy were completely unfounded – on the date of the implied abortion the nanny was at Highgrove looking after Harry who, despite his tender years, could have been called as a witness against his mother had the case gone to court. Diana was furious but she wasted no time in settling, telling one close to her, ‘The bitch can have all the money she wants, but never my sons. I gave birth to them, they belong to me.’ For his part, Charles took steps to ensure that Olga Powell was back in overall control and despite her stern nature and their affection for Tiggy, Harry and William were glad that that war at least was over. The row between people they were both so fond of had disturbed them deeply.