The royals - Kitty Kelley [138]
One headline advised, “Charles: Don’t DIther.” Another screamed, “To Di For.”
The press expected the Prince to propose on his thirty-second birthday in November 1980, when Diana spent the weekend with him and the rest of the royal family at Sandringham. So reporters camped out at the estate, waiting for an announcement. They watched Diana arrive on Friday and leave on Sunday. After her departure, Charles strolled by them as he walked his dog.
“Why don’t you all go home to your wives?” he said. “I know you were expecting some news Friday, and I know you were disappointed. But you will all be told soon enough.”
When the Prince did not propose, he was chided by an editorial in the Guardian: “The Court Circular that issued from Buckingham Palace last night,” wrote the newspaper, “was profoundly disappointing for a nation which, beset by economic and political dissent, had briefly believed that the sound of distant tumbrels was to be drowned by the peal of royal wedding bells.”
The romance was almost derailed on November 16, 1980, when the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined “Royal Love Train.” The newspaper cited an unidentified police officer, who claimed that Lady Diana had spent two secret nights with Prince Charles aboard the royal train. The train, with its elaborate kitchen, sitting room, and bedroom suite, was used only by members of the royal family for travel on official business. The story alleged that Charles was spending the night aboard the train after engagements in the Duchy of Cornwall and had summoned Diana, who was secretly escorted through a police barricade in the middle of the night. The caption accompanying a photo of the secluded train in Wiltshire: “Love in The Sidings.”
“Absolutely scurrilous and totally false,” thundered the Queen’s press secretary. “Her Majesty takes grave exception.” The Palace demanded a retraction and an apology, but the editor, Robert Edwards, stood firm. He said he had a sworn statement from an eyewitness who saw a woman board the train on two nights, spend several hours with the Prince in his private bedroom compartment, and leave clandestinely. But the editor made one mistake: he identified the blond as Diana.
“It was Camilla Parker Bowles,” said John Barratt. “She had started up again with Charles after Mountbatten’s death, when she called to offer her condolences. I know because I was wrapping things up at Broadlands then and [was] in regular contact with the Prince. He did not hide the fact that Mrs. Parker Bowles was back in his life. He said she was helping him sort things out. They spent hours together—riding, hunting, shooting. She acted as his hostess at dinner parties, and arranged luncheons and country weekends, and, naturally, controlled the guest lists. Charles called her his Girl Friday.
“She was perfect for him—horsey and accommodating. Charles is like all the Windsor men, and I include Lord Louis and Prince Philip. They like women who look like men. Long legs in riding breeches. They want their tarts to look like their horses. Mountbatten’s women, Philip’s women, Charles’s women—all cut the same, beginning with Sasha [the Duchess of Abercorn], who is the Queen’s cousin. She was Mountbatten’s before he passed her on to Philip, which is what they do in that family. Lord Louis and Philip also shared that chinless wonder [Barratt names a woman married to one of Prince Philip’s close friends] whom Charles also inherited. Camilla was different. She didn’t come in under Mountbatten or Philip before she got to Charles. She was under him from the start.”
The Prince of Wales continued seeing Camilla during the time her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Parker Bowles, was posted to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)* to help the emerging British colony make its transition to independence. She did not accompany him on his overseas assignment.
“Charles said he couldn’t bear for her to leave, so she didn’t,” said a friend who boarded her horses