The royals - Kitty Kelley [187]
Soon after, Hewitt received transfer orders to Germany to command a tank squadron. Excited by his promotion, he worried about telling Diana he would be gone from her life for two years. He later said she had berated him for leaving her and putting his career ahead of their relationship. For several months she did not take his calls, and he left for Germany without seeing her.
Within weeks Diana sought out the man she had been infatuated with when she was seventeen. This time James Gilbey was much more receptive. Over lunches and quiet dinners he listened worshipfully as she unfolded the saga of her miserable marriage. And he became her cushion. They had started seeing each other again after a private dinner party at the home of their friend David Frost, the television interviewer, and his wife, Carina. As Diana and Gilbey were leaving that evening, they were photographed in front of Frost’s house, kissing good-bye. The kiss was so intense that the photographer decided to stake out Gilbey’s apartment in London’s Lennox Gardens, near Harrods department store. Days later the photographer was rewarded with a shot of the Princess leaving Gilbey’s apartment at 1:15 A.M. Gilbey said they were playing bridge but added: “I suppose it wasn’t that wise for Diana and I [sic] to meet in those circumstances.”
From then on, Diana acted with much more caution. Instead of visiting Gilbey’s apartment, she arranged to meet him secretly at Mara Berni’s home, around the corner from the San Lorenzo restaurant. She also bought a shredder for her office at Kensington Palace. She used post office boxes for personal correspondence and talked on the phone in code. She preferred mobile phones because she thought they were more secure. But when she found out they were less secure, she stopped using them. When using the phones in Kensington Palace, she often closed the doors of her suite and turned up the television so servants couldn’t eavesdrop.
Despite her efforts to avoid detection, her telephone conversation with James Gilbey on December 31, 1989, was intercepted by a stranger’s scanning device and tape-recorded. When the British tabloids published the transcript three years later, they withheld an explicit ten-minute segment in which the Princess and her lover discussed masturbation. They also talked about Diana’s fear of getting pregnant. “Darling, that’s not going to happen,” Gilbey said reassuringly. “You won’t get pregnant.” Diana said she was worried after watching a soap opera earlier in which one of the main characters had had a baby. “They thought it was by her husband,” said the Princess. “It was by another man.” She and Gilbey laughed.
“Squidgy [his nickname for Diana], kiss me…. Oh, God. It’s so wonderful, isn’t it, this sort of feeling? Don’t you like it?”
Diana replied, “I love it, I love it.”
By the time the tape-recorded conversation known as Squidgygate became public, the Princess’s pedestal had toppled into the ditch, and she was struggling to keep her head above the muck.
SEVENTEEN
The Duchess was teetering. She had veered from the path marked “Duty and Decorum” a few weeks before her wedding. And she was blamed for leading the Princess of Wales astray. The two women had been photographed at Ascot, poking a man’s bottom with the tips of their umbrellas. Days later they dressed up as policewomen to raid Prince Andrew’s stag party. With badges and billyclubs they barged into Annabel’s nightclub and sat at the bar, drinking. The British press reported the incident in terms of class that Americans could understand: bush league vs. Junior League. Sarah was pilloried as the biker babe from hell. Diana, the sweetheart next door, emerged unscathed. They were like the fairy tale of the two