The Queen, page 23
The “frightening” incident that prompted this condition came during the much-vaunted attack on HMS Invincible. Instead of hitting the aircraft carrier, the assault, which took place on May 25, ended with the sinking of the 695-foot container ship Atlantic Conveyor and the deaths of twelve crew members.
In Buenos Aires the junta falsely claimed that they had sunk the Invincible and issued doctored photographs to the world media. Like any parents, the queen and her husband were concerned about their son, especially knowing the precarious position of the task force.
The next day, May 26, 1982, at the opening of the giant Kielder Water in Northumberland, the queen told the crowds. “Before I begin, I would like to say one thing. Our thoughts today are with those in the South Atlantic, and our prayers are for their success and safe return to their homes and loved ones.”7 Days later the queen was shaken once more by further claims from Argentina that her son was wounded and in enemy hands and that Invincible was a blazing hulk. Even Princess Anne made a rare visit to her local church in Gloucestershire to join a prayer service for the well-being of the fighting men in the South Atlantic.
The British task force ultimately prevailed, and following the Argentinian surrender on June 14, Andrew took the opportunity visit the islands’ capital, Port Stanley, where he spoke to his “surprised” mother using one of the few satellite phones.8
He was another two months at sea and during that time he suffered a demotion to third in line to the throne after his sister-in-law gave birth to Prince William on June 21. One of the first visitors was the queen, who inspected the mite at St. Mary’s Hospital in central London. “Thank goodness he hasn’t [got] ears like his father,” was the queen’s droll observation.9 Her eldest son’s ears were so prominent that not only were they the subject of media ridicule but the prince had considered an operation to pin them back.
In a truly momentous summer, cartoonists struggled to depict an episode in the queen’s life that was as comic as it was bizarre. In the early morning of July 9, Michael Fagan, an unemployed laborer with mental health issues, broke into Buckingham Palace and, after a series of flukes, managed to find his way into the queen’s bedroom. The queen, who was startled awake, twice rang for the police for help and, in an effort to placate him, listened intently as he told her about his marital and financial issues. This was the queen behaving not as figurehead but as mother figure.
This was the second time Fagan had managed to break into the palace undetected, and if nothing else his incursion showed the wholly inadequate security system that was in place. On the second occasion he specifically wanted to see the queen, in his mind an idealized maternal symbol, to help sort out the mess he found himself in. He later told me: “I wanted her to be the woman I could communicate with, who would understand me and my everyday aspirations. I wanted her to know me. This woman is the pinnacle of our society, the summit of our dreams. We are tribal animals and the Queen is the head of the tribe. I wanted to speak to our chieftain.”10
The queen recognized her mythical status and once remarked that she accepted that she was seen as a Jungian archetype, a concept developed by the psychologist Carl Jung whereby society projects its dreams of motherhood, justice, and leadership on the figure of the monarch.
During his self-imposed quest Fagan walked from his home in Islington, north London, to the perimeter of Buckingham Palace.
He easily scaled the wall, got through an open window, and before long found himself in the Throne Room. By good fortune he accidentally pressed a hidden handle in the dado rail that opened a secret door leading to the queen’s private apartments.
His good luck continued. Normally a policeman would be sitting outside the queen’s bedroom but he had gone off duty and the queen’s footman, Paul Whybrew, had just taken the royal corgis for their early-morning walk. By a million-to-one chance the queen was alone and unguarded and, after quietly opening a door, Fagan found himself in her bedroom. He hid himself behind the curtains as he assessed the person in the bed, thinking at first the figure was so small it must be a child. He pulled the curtains aside to get a better look. The shaft of light woke the queen who saw, not her female maid, but a barefoot Fagan, in jeans and T-shirt, clutching a broken ashtray that had cut his thumb.
She pressed the alarm bell and then, according to the official report by Assistant Commissioner Dellow of Scotland Yard, made the first of two calls to the palace telephonist to send police to her bedroom. As the queen waited for the police, she reacted in textbook style, remaining calm and collected while she engaged the intruder in polite conversation. She listened to Fagan’s tale of woe and in turn chatted about her own children, noting that Prince Charles was about Fagan’s age.
Six minutes later the queen made a second call, coolly asking why there had been no response. Then she used the pretext of Fagan’s craving for a cigarette to summon a maid, Elizabeth Andrew, to her bedroom. When she saw Fagan sitting on the edge of the sovereign’s bed the startled housemaid uttered the immortal phrase: “Bloody hell, Ma’am. What’s he doing here?”11 Afterward her broad northern accent became part of the queen’s own comic repartee.
Fagan’s version, which has varied, is somewhat different. According to him, there was no conversation. Instead the queen grabbed the white telephone, asked for help, and then shouted, “Get out, get out,” before she jumped out of bed herself ran across the room and out of the door. The confrontation was all over in seconds, Fagan left alone and crying by the empty bed. A few minutes later he was ushered into a pantry by Paul Whybrew who had just returned from walking the dogs.
He recalls the queen saying: “Can you give this man a drink?” The footman, astonished by the queen’s calm demeanor, took an unprotesting Fagan into the Page’s Vestibule and poured him a Famous Grouse whiskey.
As he did so he heard the queen screaming down the phone demanding to know why the police hadn’t arrived. “I have never heard the Queen so angry,” he later told colleagues.12
The subsequent inquiry revealed a whole catalog of blunders, from exterior cameras and other detection devices not working on the palace perimeter to the duty police officer changing into a smarter uniform after being summoned by the monarch.
The queen was as annoyed that her domestic affairs had become a matter of consuming public interest as she was that security had allowed Fagan all the way into the royal bedroom. “Give her a cuddle, Philip,” pleaded the Daily Mirror as the nation gleefully discussed the separate sleeping arrangements of the sovereign and her consort.13 The reality was that the royal couple did share the same bed but, by ill luck, Prince Philip had slept in his own quarters before leaving very early to exercise his horses.
He was furious at the incompetence of the police and complimentary of his wife’s bravery. She dismissed the plaudits and told friends that the entire event was too surreal to be taken seriously. There were further unhappy consequences. Michael Rauch, a male prostitute, read about the Fagan incident and visited the offices of the Sun newspaper to tell them about his own affair with the queen’s bodyguard, Commander Michael Trestrail. The officer, nicknamed Aquarius as he carried the Queen’s Malvern water, promptly resigned.14
It was a deeply distressing time. A few days later not only did her childhood friend and Prince Philip’s private secretary Lord Rupert Nevill die but the IRA planted bombs in Hyde Park and at a bandstand in Regent’s Park that killed and injured soldiers and horses of the Queen’s Household Cavalry Blues and Royals and the Green Jackets. The initial blast killed four Blues and Royals soldiers and injured a further twenty-three. Seven horses were killed outright or had to be put down. One horse, Sefton, survived an eight-hour operation to removes nails and other pieces of shrapnel from his bloodied frame. A second bomb hidden in a bandstand where musicians from the Royal Green Jackets were playing killed seven and wounded more than fifty. That night the queen was heard repeating: “The poor horses, my poor soldiers,” as the horror of that day sank in.15
Though she affected to make light of the Fagan incident, this was, according to friends, a distressing and disconcerting time that unsettled her famous equilibrium for several months. “She said she met so many dotty people that one more made no difference,” recalled her friend Margaret Rhodes, who thought she was putting on a brave face to hide the shock.16 Her instincts proved correct as the queen, feeling overwhelmed, decided for the first time in her life that she needed medical advice and counseling. She asked Betty Parsons, the no-nonsense childbirth guru who helped teach her breathing exercises before the birth of Prince Edward, to come to the palace to give her some further instruction to help restore her peace of mind.17 Parsons’s mantra was simple but effective: Drop the shoulders, breathe gently, pause, and then let the breath come in. Then repeat. The soothing repetition, which became a kind of meditation, helped restore a much-needed sense of calm in the heart of the monarch.
Her equilibrium was further improved when, on July 21, Prince Andrew returned to Portsmouth aboard HMS Invincible. The prince sauntered down the gangway, a red rose between his teeth, to be met by his parents who were clearly delighted, like many other families, that he had come home safe and sound. He was now celebrated as a bona-fide war hero and one of the world’s most eligible bachelors.
During his leave the queen gladly gave the go-ahead for her second son and a party of friends, which included actor Kathleen “Koo” Stark whom he had been quietly dating for a while, to stay at Princess Margaret’s clifftop retreat on the tiny island of Mustique. As luck would have it, a Fleet Street photographer and his girlfriend were on the same British Airways flight to Barbados as the royal party. He discovered that Andrew and Koo were traveling together under the names Mr. and Mrs. Cambridge. At the time no one could be sure that the prince had not secretly married the American actor. When it was later discovered that Koo had appeared in a tepidly erotic rite-of-passage movie called Emily, there was a global hue and cry orchestrated not just by newspapers but by British lawmakers who were horrified that the queen’s son could have married a “soft porn star”—a description that was disgracefully wide of the mark.18
Such was the international media hysteria to take the first picture of the lovebirds together in paradise that one cameraman from an American supermarket tabloid considered hiring a submarine and photographing the couple through the periscope. Headlines suggesting that the queen was “furious” at Andrew’s choice of partner were way wide of the mark. She had met Koo before when she was invited to Balmoral and, like Diana and other members of the family, had found her polite, bright, and conversationally adept. Her only comment when their romance became public was: “Oh, I do wish they would call you Kathleen and Andrew.” In her own way the queen, who could see that Kathleen was good news for her son, tried to change the narrative about the couple. She showed her support of her son’s choice when, according to Kathleen, she invited the couple for a picnic tea where they could be photographed by the paparazzi. She recalled: “Her Majesty made a point of snapping open the News of the World [front-page headline: QUEEN BANS KOO]. Her actions spoke volumes as she poured tea.”19 In 1983 the queen took the unusual step of going to court and accepted an out-of-court settlement over newspaper claims that Andrew’s girlfriend had regularly stayed overnight at Buckingham Palace.
Perhaps inevitably the couple went their separate ways though they stayed friends.
But for an ill-judged choice early in her acting career it is likely that Kathleen Stark would have been the first American actress to marry a member of the royal family, rather than Meghan Markle.
Meanwhile the Queen’s only daughter was working through tricky marital issues. The official release of photographs of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips to celebrate his thirty-fourth birthday was seen by those in the know as another attempt to alter perceptions about the royal couple. They had been beset by rumors about the state of their marriage, especially after stories emerged in the tabloids that Anne’s bodyguard Peter Cross had been removed from royal protection duties and transferred back to the uniformed branch after becoming “over familiar” with the queen’s daughter. Even after he was pulled from royal duties, Cross and the queen’s daughter kept in contact by phone or used safe houses. She used the code term Mrs. Wallis, presumably a reference to Wallis Simpson, when she called. How far the queen was privy to Anne’s behavior is a matter of debate. As affairs are usually conducted in secret, it is doubtful that Anne would have confided in her mother. The queen may well, though, have been aware of the bigger, more concerning picture that her daughter’s marriage was in trouble.
Equally troubling was the negative narrative about Diana that was snowballing in the popular prints. A fairy-tale princess no more, she was accused of being a “fiend” and a “monster” by influential gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, the princess deemed responsible for a wave of staff departures including Charles’s bodyguard, valet, private secretary, and others. The princess, stung by this criticism, told journalists during a public engagement: “I don’t just sack people.”20
The queen showed her confidence in her daughter-in-law and agreed to her request, turned down by her private secretary Sir Philip Moore and Prince Charles, that she should represent the family and the monarchy at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, who was killed in a car accident in September 1982.
Her demure and dignified manner during the emotional funeral convinced the queen that her policy of quiet understanding of and support for the Princess of Wales was paying dividends. The real turning point was the royal couple’s highly successful six-week tour of New Zealand and Australia in April and May 1983. The grueling visit—the couple took over fifty flights during the tour—demonstrated to the queen that Diana had the stamina and sparkle to make these visits a success.
However, a green-eyed monster lurked beneath the surface. As the tour gathered momentum, Prince Charles became increasingly jealous of his wife’s popularity. During walkabouts the crowd groaned if Charles went to their side of the street, cheering only if Diana came to shake hands. Though he made light of it in speeches, privately it rankled. It was but another indication of their growing estrangement. These scudding storm clouds gave way to a shaft of sunshine when Diana discovered that she was pregnant with her second child. A new life, a new beginning was always a source of pleasure for the queen, a sense of history in the making. Prince Harry was born on September 15, 1984, and with his arrival the queen hoped that the teething troubles of their marriage were now behind them.
She invited Andrew, a keen amateur photographer, to take her sixtieth-birthday photograph and the result was a relaxed, smiling mother, arms crossed and dressed in a twinset. She was more mumsy than monarch.
To celebrate this personal milestone, postage stamps were issued, laudatory documentaries edited, and a short musical commissioned by Prince Edward. The high point was a gala at the Royal Opera House where Frederick Ashton choreographed an eight-minute-long ballet, Nursery Suite, which reflected the happy childhood of the queen and her sister. Princess Margaret, knowing the character of her no-nonsense sister, warned him not to make the work too whimsical. The short ballet was a triumph; the queen, her mother, and sister all “ended up in floods of tears,” Margaret wrote, after watching this affectionate portrait, sunny memories triggered by this dance to the music of time.21
Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the queen was not immune to tears. A week later on April 29, the Princess of Wales described her astonishment as the queen wept at the graveside of the Duchess of Windsor, a woman she had met infrequently and barely knew. She surmised that it was the passing of a somewhat tragic figure who lived her last years as a bed-bound recluse that sparked the emotion. Her tears perhaps of remembrance and regret. Her brief outburst was enough to shock Diana, who later told author Ingrid Seward: “We were at the graveside, Charles and me and the Queen and when she started crying I said to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is really happening.’”
She added that the queen had been “incredibly kind” to the duchess in her last years, particularly with regard to paying all her bills.22 From that day Diana never saw her cry again in private or public.
She was, though, entitled to shed tears of joy a few weeks later when, on a sunny day in July 1986, she looked on as a beaming Prince Andrew watched Sarah Ferguson, now Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, walk down the aisle of Westminster Abbey on their wedding day. Their marriage was a source of satisfaction for both the queen and Prince Philip. After his romance with Koo Stark ended, Prince Andrew had garnered a reputation as a playboy prince with a roving eye. One of his casual girlfriends had sold her story about late-night sexual exploits under a palm tree on a sandy beach in the Caribbean. Her disclosures coincided with Princess Anne’s detective lover, Peter Cross, selling his story to a Sunday tabloid in September 1985. The queen and Prince Philip could do little about the detective’s allegations other than ride out the storm, but with Andrew they were prompted into action. A few admonishing words from a stern Philip seemed to have done the trick. From then on the prince dated the “right sort” of girl. Sarah definitely came into that category. The daughter of Major Ronald Ferguson, who was Prince Charles’s polo manager, Sarah was a familiar face in royal circles. Ginger-haired and freckle-faced, she was ebullient, energetic, and game for a laugh. During Ascot week she was invited to stay at Windsor Castle as a guest of her friend the Princess of Wales. It was over lunch that Sarah and Andrew first bonded, Andrew feeding her chocolate profiteroles, much as she protested that she was dieting. As he later recalled: “It had to start somewhere.”23
