The royals - Kitty Kelley [176]
The Princess’s detective escorted her on her endless rounds of shopping and took her for long drives through the hills of Balmoral when her husband went fishing alone and she wanted to get away from the rest of the royal family. She turned to Mannakee when she was upset, which was often in those days, and he offered consolation and a strong shoulder to cry on. He comforted her when she became unstrung before public engagements.
“On one occasion, she kept saying she couldn’t go ahead with it, and just collapsed into my arms,” said Mannakee. “I hugged her and stopped her crying. What else would you have done?”
The policeman became the repository of Diana’s secrets, including her suspicions about her husband and Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana told Mannakee she was convinced that despite Charles’s promises to her before they married, he had gone back to his mistress. Diana said she confirmed her suspicions one weekend when she arrived at Highgrove and Charles was not there. His aide said he had left minutes before she arrived, roaring off by himself in his sports car. He did not say where he was going and didn’t leave a number where he could be reached in case of emergency.
Diana went into his study and pushed the recall button on his mobile phone, which rang the Parker Bowles estate. When the butler answered, she hung up. She checked Charles’s private calendar and saw a “C” marked on that date. She searched his desk drawers and told her bodyguard that she had found a cache of letters from Camilla. Some were chatty and some extremely intimate, addressed to “My Beloved.”
After that, Mannakee felt even more protective toward the Princess, who tearfully asked him why her husband had turned away from her. “He’s a fool,” said Mannakee, shaking his head. “A bloody fool.” Diana was touched by her detective’s loyalty, and his working-class London accent made her smile. He became her close friend, her confidant, even her fashion consultant. She turned to him the way a wife turns to a husband, looking for approval. Servants recall many occasions when the Princess dressed for a public engagement and came out of her room to ask her bodyguard for his opinion.
“Barry, how do I look? Do you think these are the right earrings?”
“Perfect,” he said. She twirled in front of him, smoothed down her evening dress, and applied more lip gloss.
“Are you sure?” she asked, looking in the mirror. “Do I look all right?”
“Sensational, as you know you do,” he said with a laugh. “I could quite fancy you myself.”
“But you do already, don’t you?” she said flirtatiously.
Their easy banter disturbed Charles, who lived by a double standard: he confided in his gardener at Highgrove about the woeful state of his marriage, but he could not stand Diana confiding in her bodyguard. Charles accused her of lacking decorum and said her behavior with the staff was deplorable.
He was embarrassed that their marital fights, which had gone on behind closed doors, were now being waged in front of the servants. He blamed Diana for the open warfare because she had started to talk back. In the beginning of their marriage, she had been too insecure to speak up. But she gradually overcame her shrinking deference, and as her confidence grew with her popularity, she was no longer willing to defer.
Usually restrained in public, the Princess let loose in private. She railed about her husband’s “toadying” friends, his preoccupation with polo, his dinner parties with “boring old men who smell of cigars,” and his solitary trips to fish and paint and ski. She said his excursions were simply excuses to get away from her.
The Prince responded that he needed the trips to restore his