The royals - Kitty Kelley [175]
“Who the hell is standing on my train?” she yelled. The wedding dress designer dropped to her knees and quickly rearranged the folds of the gown. The bride then moved forward and grabbed her father’s arm.
“C’mon, Dads,” she said, “let’s show ’em how it’s done.”
Major Ferguson nervously began the long walk down the aisle of the eleventh-century Abbey with his daughter, who smiled nonstop. She made faces at one guest, gave a thumbs-up to another, and cracked jokes about the outlandish outfits she spotted among the 1,800 guests.
Major Ferguson was unnerved. “When we reached the archway leading to the chancel with the Queen and Prince Andrew gazing down expectantly,” he recalled, “I had to say, ‘Come on. You’ve got to be serious now.’ ”
Fergie tried to rein herself in, but the effort showed. At the altar, Prince Andrew stepped forward with his Falklands medals pinned to the breast of his naval lieutenant’s uniform. “You look wonderful,” he said.
“Thank you, darling,” she said, smiling. “I forgot to pack my toothbrush.”
“Never mind,” said the beaming duke.
The Queen, who occasionally took deep breaths to control her emotions during the service, could not take her eyes off her son.
Princess Michael of Kent, who was married to the Queen’s cousin, could not stop looking at the bride. “All that ghastly winking as she came down the aisle,” she said. “So common.”
The Princess of Wales seemed not to notice. Sitting with the royal family on pink-and-gold chairs, apart from the rest of the congregation, she looked sad and distracted, staring into space. She brightened up only when she saw her son, William, one of the four little pages. Dressed in a sailor suit, the four-year-old Prince tugged on his cap, wound the string around his nose, chewed it like taffy, and then pulled out his ceremonial dagger to bedevil the six-year-old bridesmaid next to him.
Having brought Sarah and Andrew together, Diana had looked forward to having a friend as a sister-in-law and to sharing what she called “the royal load.” But she was unprepared for sharing the spotlight. The sudden media attention directed at Fergie jolted Diana, who was accustomed to being the focus of press interest. She slipped into second place temporarily. She tried to make light of her reduced status by joking to reporters. “You won’t need me now,” she teased. “You’ve got Fergie.”
Sarah and Andrew’s royal wedding was characterized most amusingly by an Italian newspaper, Milan’s Il Giorno: “And so to conclude, if it is true, as Flaubert asserted, that to be happy, it is necessary not to be too intelligent, to be a little bit arrogant, and above all, to have good health, then there is no doubt that the future of Andrew and Sarah will be among the best.” And it was. Sublime. For a time.
SIXTEEN
The Prince of Wales was convinced that his wife was having an affair with her bodyguard. Barry Mannakee, a gregarious police sergeant, had been assigned to protect the Princess in 1985 when the Waleses’ marriage started falling apart. He accompanied her wherever she went, and as Charles spent more time away from his wife, she turned to her personal detective for company.
“He was like all the protection officers for royalty,”* said the former head of Scotland Yard, who received a title when he retired. “They are selected for sensitivity and diplomacy. They’re highly skilled at security and armed at all times, but they must also blend into any circumstance. This requires a range of social skills—skiing, sailing, horseback riding, hunting, even carriage riding. The royalty protection boys have expensive haircuts and wear Turnbull and Asser shirts. They’re handsome, charming, and seductive.”
The thirty-nine-year-old protection officer for the Princess of Wales was a married man with two children, so he got along well with three-year-old Prince William. “Barry was such a colorful and easygoing character,” recalled the Highgrove housekeeper. “He