Latest drop from the DM .
A day or two before the funeral I was driven by a friend from Althorp to the Chapel Royal, a small, historic place of worship that stands across the road from St James’s Palace in London. This was where Diana’s coffin was placed in the days between its arrival from Paris and the night before her final service. I had come to sit with Diana, alone.
Dappled sunlight from the high stained-glass windows played across the coffin that both formed the focus of the room and presented me with the stark evidence of Diana’s death.
I sat down lightly beside it and began to talk to my sister for some time, expressing love and grief, and making promises on her behalf. After a short while, I remembered that I had my eulogy in my pocket, and it occurred to me that I should read it to her.
‘I stand before you today…’ I started, while in fact remaining seated beside Diana’s body, and carried through to the end, when I proclaimed my deep pride at being her brother.
The chapel’s stillness seemed to lift at that point and, though this was early September, with the tail-end of summer still in the air, I sensed that I heard a loud swirling, like a brisk autumn wind lifting and twisting dry fallen leaves. In that moment, when fantasy surely took hold of my overloaded senses, I felt that Diana was applauding my words, with soft insistence. This imagining gave me hope that I was indeed going to say what she wanted me to say when the time came.
On the day of the funeral, I woke early after a fitful sleep, and was driven to St James’s Palace, where the funeral procession would set off. I had had no contact with Prince Charles since hanging up on him after he had disrespected Diana and disparaged our family’s sense of duty.
As I was ushered along corridors to meet him, I spotted William and Harry in a side room, with its large television on. I thought how very unsettling it must be to watch the preamble to your mother’s funeral on TV and was impressed, for the first of many times that day, by my nephews’ apparent composure at such an impossible time.
I was shown into a sitting room where Prince Charles was seated, alone. He was polite and formal. Neither of us mentioned our phone call altercation. It was as if we had not seen or spoken to one another for an age. We talked about other matters – how my mother and elder sisters were coping, and the beauty of the weather that morning. That sort of thing.
At last, it was time to head downstairs, and out into the waiting world. Suddenly, I was outside St James’s Palace, knowing that Diana’s coffin would soon appear.
Prince Philip was there, his usual gruffness replaced by a calm and quiet kindness. He was clearly determined to help his motherless grandsons in their walk to the funeral, and he did so with grace.
Prince Charles tried to take charge, having seemingly thought hard about the formation that the five of us chief mourners would adopt behind Diana. When he said, ‘Now, I will walk in the centre, with William on my right and Harry on my left’, Prince Philip overruled him, in an even voice that closed down any possible dissent.