The royals - Kitty Kelley [184]
Following their first dinner at Kensington Palace, Diana served him coffee on the sitting room couch. She turned off the lamp on the side table and then slipped into his lap, putting her arms around his neck. Moments later, he told his biographer, she stood up and, without saying a word, led him into her bedroom.
For the next eighteen months their affair was vigorous and passionate and not conducted with utmost discretion. They visited Althorp, and according to Hewitt, they made love in the poolhouse. They stayed with Hewitt’s mother in Devon and made love in her garden. They spent nights together at Kensington Palace with Diana’s children and weekends at Highgrove when Charles was traveling. The young Princes became so accustomed to Hewitt’s presence that they called him “Uncle James.” He spent hours teaching them how to ride. He took them to his army barracks, where they were enthralled by the men in uniform. He taught the little boys how to march, salute, and hold a gun.
In turn, Diana invited Hewitt’s father and his two sisters to London for a private dinner. James had confided in them about his relationship with Diana. She also accompanied him to Devon and spent many days with his mother, who ran a riding school. “She would always help carry the things out after lunch,” recalled Shirley Hewitt. “She would wash up the dishes and, on one occasion, helped clear out a cupboard. She said, ‘What is all this? It’s disgusting!’ and cleared the whole lot out and gave the cupboard a good wash.” On those trips Diana endeared herself to Mrs. Hewitt with her girlish questions about James’s childhood. Together they teased him as they paged through the family scrapbooks, looking at his baby pictures.
Hewitt said he had not intended to fall in love with the Princess, whom he described as emotionally vulnerable and distressed. “But,” he admitted sheepishly, “it happened…. We spoke a great deal about what the future may hold for us both. I think it was perhaps fun to fantasize and to believe in a situation which quite clearly might not be possible… the dreams of being able to spend the rest of our lives together.”
Joking nervously about the Treason Act of 1351, he wondered aloud if he could be sent to the Tower and beheaded for sleeping with Diana. The archaic law forbids adultery with the wife of the heir to the throne to ensure that all heirs are legitimate. When the Princess’s affair with her riding instructor was disclosed by Hewitt and confirmed by Diana, some royal biographers noticed a startling resemblance between the copper-haired Hewitt and rusty-haired Prince Harry. But Hewitt denied he was the father and staunchly maintained he did not meet Diana until two years after the birth of her second son. “In fact,” stated Private Eye, “Hewitt first met Diana five years earlier—at a polo match in 1981, before her marriage.”
The Princess did not exercise prudence in her relationship with the cavalry officer. Careful to disguise her voice when she called him on the pay phone at his barracks, she took few other precautions. In a sense, she felt immune from scandal because people were accustomed to seeing her at public events with escorts like Major David Waterhouse and the banker Philip Dunne. So the image of her in the presence of other men had already been established. She relied on the reservoir of goodwill she enjoyed as the Princess of Wales, knowing that most people would never suspect her of committing adultery, especially with the man in charge of the army’s stables.
“It was simply too inconceivable,” said one of her closest friends. “Even after she admitted on television that it was true—that she had been unfaithful with that cad, who cashed her in by writing a book—I still couldn’t believe it.”
Nor could her brother, Charles Spencer, who, despite contrary evidence, defended