The royals - Kitty Kelley [178]
The two men looked perplexed.
“Father’s Day in Brixton [a predominantly black area of London],” Diana told them merrily.
“I can’t believe you just said that,” said Charles.
“Oh, well, if you two are having a sense-of-humor failure, I’ll leave you to it,” said Diana as she left the table.
Miserable, Charles wrote to a friend on March 11, 1986, that his marriage “is like being trapped in a rather desperate cul-de-sac with no apparent means of exit.” He dipped into the poetry of Richard Lovelace (1618– 1658) to describe his despair: “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage….” Diana’s demands for attention exasperated him, and he was not willing to pump her up for every public appearance. In the past he had quoted Shakespeare’s Henry V and told her (to) “Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood….” Now he ignored her or else snapped with irritation, “Just plunge in and get on with it.” He complained to his biographer about her self-absorption and extraordinary vanity, saying that she spent hours every day poring over newspapers and magazines, examining her press coverage.
Acknowledging Diana’s preoccupation with herself, her friend Carolyn Bartholomew defended her to author Andrew Morton. “How can you not be self-obsessed,” she asked, “when half the world is watching everything you do?”
Charles, previously controlled and gracious in public, started losing his temper. He clashed with Diana at a polo game when she posed for photographers while sitting on the hood of his 1970 Aston Martin convertible. The rare automobile, then worth $125,000, had been a twenty-first birthday present from his mother.
“Off, off! What are you doing to my wonderful car?” he shouted. “You can’t sit there! Get off! You’ll dent the bodywork.”
Diana was mortified by his outburst. She quickly slid off the fender and slyly stuck out her leg to kick him. Startled, he grabbed her arm and pushed her against the car, but she slipped away and leaped inside. He started to cuff the back of her neck but realized that people were gathering around, so he pulled back. He smiled thinly and pretended the incident was a joke.
During another screaming argument, Charles threw a wooden bootjack at Diana. “How dare you speak to me like that?” he yelled. “Do you know who I am?”
At first he had responded to her outbursts with grim silence. Now he struggled to restrain his temper but was not always successful. Once he stalked out of the room, strode into his bathroom, and, in front of his valet, Ken Stronach, ripped the porcelain washbasin from the wall and smashed it on the floor. “I have to do it,” his valet recalled him saying. “You do understand, don’t you? Don’t you?” The wide-eyed valet nodded.
Despite his violent outbursts, Charles denied ever striking his wife. In fact, he blamed her for throwing lamps and breaking windows. During one of their visits to Althorp, her family estate, they stayed in a newly decorated suite that Diana’s father admitted Charles and Diana left “somewhat damaged.” An antique mirror was smashed, a window cracked, and a priceless chair shattered. “It was an almighty row,” said the Earl Spencer, who added quickly that every married couple had fights. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Diana is still very much in love with Charles.”
Diana stopped going to Althorp because of her father’s wife. So the Earl Spencer had to go to London to see his daughter and grandchildren. After her brother’s wedding, Diana said she could no longer bear the presence of “that woman [her stepmother].” The sight of Raine presiding over the Spencer ancestral home during a prenuptial party for her brother had incensed Diana. She felt that her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, had been slighted. Frances had recently