The royals - Kitty Kelley [148]
Charles, never a decisive man, now reevaluated his decision to marry Diana. He visited his sister at Gatcombe Park and confided his doubts. Princess Anne, who was a month from giving birth to her second child, was in no mood for her brother’s soul-searching whines. Airily she dismissed him as gumless. “Charles,” she said, “you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt.” She repeated Queen Victoria’s advice to her daughter on how to survive the act of love: “Just close your eyes and think of England.”
Still pondering his decision, the Prince visited a former lover, Zoe Sallis, in London. Her Ebury Street apartment was a few yards from the police station, where patrolmen watched Charles arrive and depart. He tried to disguise himself by wearing a gray fedora hat, which he pulled over his forehead. Several policemen, watching from a window, laughed at the royal camouflage. One said, “He looks like a bloke with big ears in a bonnet.”
“Zoe told me later that Prince Charles had confided in her his misery and fear of marrying Diana,” said Time’s Roland Flamini, “but he felt he had a duty to go through with it.”
Resigned to prudence over passion, Charles visited Broadlands, where he planned to spend the first part of his honeymoon. “Five days before the royal wedding,” said John Barratt, shaking his head, “Charles told myself and Lord Romsey [Mountbatten’s grandson] that Camilla was the only woman he had ever loved. He told us, ‘I could never feel the same way about Diana as I do about Camilla.’ Lord Romsey simply assured him that his feelings would, most likely, change.”
Although the bride was bulimic and the bridegroom a bounder, they looked like an ideal couple. The public had been entranced by their romance: the Prince had finally found his Princess, and after their wedding on July 29, 1981, they would live happily ever after. Abracadabra, and bippitty boppetty boo. Most Britons needed to believe in this fairy tale to distract themselves from the awful reality of inner-city riots, IRA bombings, and widespread unemployment.
The Queen understood the spell a royal wedding could cast on an impoverished country. Despite more than three million people unemployed, Her Majesty did not hesitate to spend taxpayers’ money. She felt any expense for ceremony (engraved invitations alone cost $10,000) was a hedge against hopelessness. Much as she disliked the whiff of show business, and the comparisons between royalty and celebrity, she staged an extravaganza worthy of Hollywood, complete with drums, trumpets, and coaches. Her production combined the romance of High Society with the magic of Fantasia. She had better costumes and more horses than Ben-Hur. The royal wedding she produced in 1981 gave the British monarchy its biggest ratings to date and British tourism its greatest revenues. The Queen knew that her crown and country depended on such moments of pageantry. “This is what we do best,” said her Lord Chamberlain.
The site was St. Paul’s Cathedral because it could accommodate more people than Westminster Abbey. “I’m glad it’s there,” said Diana. “It would be too painful for me to marry Charles where my parents were joined for life.” The wedding hymn she chose emphasized “the love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price, and lays upon the altar the final sacrifice.”
The Queen sent 2,500 invitations* to friends, family, and heads of state, plus the crowned heads of Europe. King Juan Carlos of Spain declined his invitation when he learned the newlyweds would board the royal yacht at Gibraltar during their honeymoon. Spain had long disputed British occupancy of the little colony on the tip of the Iberian peninsula, and the King said Britain’s decision to have Charles and Diana join the Britannia there was a diplomatic blunder. Face-to-face, Prince Philip told Juan Carlos he was an idiot. “We’re fed up with the story of Gibraltar,” Philip