The royals - Kitty Kelley [131]
“Charles tried to summon the shade of Lord Louis on a Ouija board,” said John Barratt, “but when the press found out, the Palace made him deny it because he looked barmy.”
During this time, Charles became intensely involved with a beautiful Indian-born actress who had been the mistress of Hollywood director John Huston. Zoe Sallis, who gave birth to Huston’s son in 1962, was a Buddhist and devoted to swamis. Her influence on Prince Charles disturbed the Palace. She espoused transcendentalism and the doctrine of many divinities, which is inconsistent with the Anglican belief in one omnipotent God.
Charles was enraptured by his new lover, who was ten years his senior, and he began practicing what she was preaching. She had given him a book entitled The Path of the Masters and said that her mission was to convert him to belief in reincarnation. To the dismay of his staff, she succeeded. He began talking about the transmigration of souls and speculated about the form that Lord Mountbatten might assume when he returned to earth.
The Prince’s private secretary, Edward Adeane, became alarmed by what he saw as incoherent ramblings. The tough-minded barrister, whose father, Sir Michael Adeane, had been private secretary to the Queen, expected more of the future King of England than Charles was demonstrating. Adeane was dismayed by the hairshirt mentality, the do-good speeches, and the forays into alternative medicine. Mostly he was concerned about Charles’s attitude toward religion. Adeane tried to redirect him back to the conventional teachings of the Church of England. He stressed the responsibility of the heir apparent to his future subjects, but Charles was not receptive. He was too enthralled by the message of nirvana. Under the influence of his new lover, he became a vegetarian and resolved (temporarily) to stop killing animals. “I want to purify myself,” he declared, “and pursue a oneness with all faiths.”
“It’s got to be stopped,” said Adeane to other members of the staff. Asserting himself, the private secretary told the Prince his relationship with the beautiful Buddhist was potentially harmful to the monarchy. Adeane felt the older woman’s influence was warping Charles’s perspective. He said Charles was destined to become Defender of the Faith—not, as Adeane put it, defender of many faiths. He recommended that Charles end the relationship, but Charles refused—until Adeane threatened to go to the Queen. Then Charles relented. At the age of thirty-one he was still afraid of his mother.
Charles ricocheted from casual dates to one-night stands and, in between, pursued brief relationships with tall, beautiful blondes whose fathers were rich landowners. “I fall in love so easily,” he told reporters, trying to explain away the numerous women drifting into and out of his life. He proposed marriage twice—once to Davina Sheffield and again to Anna Wallace—but neither blonde accepted his proposal, and both fell out of favor once their pasts were revealed in the press.
“Oh, God,” Charles moaned to his valet, “will I never find a woman worthy enough?”
During the summer of 1980, he found her sitting on a bale of hay. The fresh and lovely nineteen-year-old Lady Diana Spencer seemed too young and too innocent to have a past. Charles, who was thirteen years older, noticed her during a weekend house party at the country home of his friends Philippa and Robert de Pass. The Prince had met Diana in 1977, when he briefly dated her oldest sister,