The royals - Kitty Kelley [246]
During one of her visits to Greenwich, Connecticut, she appeared at a Champagne reception and dinner for which guests had paid $500. As she worked the room, her three assistants followed in her wake, toting copies of her book Victoria and Albert: A Family Life at Osborne House. They asked: “Would you like to buy the Duchess’s book? It’s $100. She’ll sign it for you!”
Fergie insisted that she needed the money to support herself and her children. As she told the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., “It’s rubbish to say that I’m rich…. I can’t afford to buy a house…. I rent a pile in Surrey and have to be out with a month’s notice…. My husband pays only the school fees. I have to pay everything else…. I’m Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, but I’m not a millionairess.”
She challenged critics who questioned her moneymaking schemes, including her $2 million advance from a U.S. publisher to write a manual for single working mothers. “The facts are that I’m a separated mother of two children and responsible for the finances of my family,” she said. “Therefore, a great deal of my time has to be, has to be, occupied with commercial work. Believe it or not, that is the truth.”
The unquestionable truth was that Fergie accepted the largesse of rich friends and eager admirers. Her rationale: She said she couldn’t pay her own way. So she charged for personal appearances at benefits and theme parks. She picked up $75,000 for flying to Sydney, Australia, to launch Rupert Murdoch’s pay-TV network. She flew to Beijing, China, for the opening of an $8 million restaurant because the owner paid her. Diana was more discreet, but she, too, freely accepted the gratuities that came her way as royalty. Both women were friends of the flamboyant founder of the Virgin empire, Richard Branson, and enjoyed free trips on Virgin Atlantic Airways and free holidays at Virgin Hotels, preferring Necker Island in the Caribbean, which cost paying guests $15,000 a week. Fergie and Diana reciprocated by giving Branson their royal endorsements. They appeared at his openings, posed with him for pictures, and appeared in public wearing his company T-shirts.
Diana’s friends, who preferred her association with the saintly Mother Teresa, warned her about the errant Duchess. “Free-loading Fergie is the worst friend you could have,” wrote John Junor, but Diana decided that her sister-in-law was her only ally. “She’s been over the same course,” Diana said of Fergie.
In the past, the two young women had experienced edgy relations. Separated by competition and envy, they had avoided each other and sniped to friends about each other. During her taped conversation with James Gilbey, Diana dismissed Fergie as “the redhead” who was trying to cash in on her good image. For her part, Fergie thought Diana’s good image was manipulated and undeserved. During her Mt. Everest expedition, the Duchess asked photographers who wanted to take her picture at a marker: “This doesn’t look posed, does it? It doesn’t look like those Taj Mahal pictures?”
When their marriages broke up, the two young women grabbed on to each other like the only survivors of a shipwreck. Ostracized by the royal family and “outside the net,” as Diana put it, they took refuge in each other. They felt that no one else understood their problems as well as they understood each other. They talked constantly about the Palace machine that was grinding them down. They supported each other in standing up to the courtiers who had become their enemies.
After two years of legal separation,