Diana's Nightmare - The Family (44 page)

When he was entitled to leave from the Navy, he went home less often, preferring one of the boltholes at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. Once, he arrived at Sunninghill to find that Fergie had taken Beatrice away for the weekend without telling him. They were barely on speaking terms.

C.C. Beaudette, who Andrew had kept in touch with, said: 'He has had a very, very difficult time. It might even be a curse being born into a family that is so much in the public eye.' It was at polo a year before the break-up that the Duchess finally came face to face with Andrew's former sweetheart.

'She was very nice, very warm and sweet and wonderful,' said C.C. 'She is a very nice girl and she means well. She was too much herself and I think that that's the problem. It's pretty obvious she just wanted to be herself.'

FERGIE'S sexual adventures with Americans, first with Steve Wyatt and later with Johnny Bryan, were not careless flings to enliven a boring life. Rather, they were her revenge on her husband. She blamed him for everything: her inability to fit in as a royal, her unfulfilled sexual needs, her shortage of money for the Gold Card shopping binges she loved to undertake in Paris, New York and Los Angeles, and even her weight.

By punishing Andrew, Fergie believed she was also exacting retribution on the Family. But her manner changed abruptly whenever her mother-in-law arrived for afternoon tea. The Queen saw only a doting wife and a loving mother; an enthusiastic and devoted member of the clan. Fergie's relief once the Queen had departed, however, was palpable. 'Her attitude was, "Phew, I got away with it again," ' said a former friend of the Duchess. 'It was so hypocritical.'

The kamikaze manner in which she conducted herself with both American lovers made disclosure inevitable. 'She was throwing down a challenge to Andrew,' said a still loyal friend. 'I believe she wanted to be found out - it has to be seen in hindsight as a cry for help. Andrew eventually recognised that, but he was slow off the mark.'

The more Fergie felt alienated in Britain, the more she gravitated towards America where her title was priceless and she could behave exactly as she chose, once knighting a pet dog with a table knife. 'I do love Americans, actually, because they are free in themselves, aren't they?' she told Barbara Walters on American TV. 'They have a very much more relaxed attitude than the British people. I certainly can relate to it because I'm a little wild.'

In seeking a remedy for her matrimonial and emotional ills in America, Fergie was following the footsteps of Edwina Mountbatten. Whereas Edwina had been feted in Hollywood by Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Fergie made friends with Sylvester Stallone, the Rambo actor, and Marvin Davis, the oil billionaire turned movie mogul who threw a star-studded dinner party for her at his Beverly Hills home. Both women adored the nightlife in New York.

'Edwina was much tougher than Fergie, rather ill- mannered and bored with her marriage to Mountbatten,' said the royal historian. 'She and Fergie both gave America a whirl for the same reason: to see if they felt any better over there and they probably did. Royalty does very well in America. Edwina was running away from Dickie and, by all accounts, Fergie couldn't stand Andrew or his family.

'It's interesting that one of Edwina's lovers, Hugh Molyneux, was replaced by Laddie Sanford, whom she had met at a party on Long Island. Like Johnny Bryan, he was a polo-playing American with two sisters. She invited him back to the family home in England for her third wedding anniversary, not unlike Bryan turning up at Sunninghill. She really gave Dickie hell. He realised too late that she was openly unfaithful to him and that neither his dignity nor his social standing mattered a damn to her. Andrew's situation wasn't much different. After Dickie found out, he and Edwina agreed to stay together but sleep in separate beds and lead separate lives. Divorce was a nasty word in the Twenties. At least Andrew has his career and his freedom.'

At the height of the emotional trauma, Edwina was struck down by a mystery illness, partly caused by the violent purging she induced to lose weight. Like Fergie she also worried incessantly about her emotional and physical well-being. 'She got better when she devoted herself to good works for the St John's Ambulance Brigade and other charities,' said the royal historian. 'But her affair with Pandit Nehru shows that it didn't make her celibate.'

It was only after Fergie admitted herself to therapy that she was able to accept that her problems were buried deep inside her psyche. By then, the consequences of her actions had affected everyone whose name followed the Queen on the Civil List. 'If you think about the Windsors, they've behaved in the most incredibly tacky way compared with other European royals,' said a disillusioned Sloane Ranger. 'To be quite honest, I think it serves them right. I don't have any sympathies with them at all and I think very few people do.'

Fergie's behaviour had even had damaging repercussions in matters of national interest. Just before the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, Fergie arranged a small dinner party at Buckingham Palace for Steve Wyatt and one of his most influential contacts in the Middle East, Dr Ramzi Salman, head of Iraqi state oil marketing. When news of the
soiree
leaked out, it created an international incident. Members of the Royal Family and the Palace secretariat were appalled that Fergie could have been so indiscreet. The Kuwaiti Royal Family, living in exile in Kensington, were on excellent terms with the House of Windsor.

The matter did not go unnoticed at the headquarters of British Intelligence in Curzon Street, Mayfair. 'You can imagine what happened when they fed Steve Wyatt's name into the computer,' said an expert on Middle Eastern affairs. 'All the bells would have gone off. His stepfather Oscar was a buddy of Saddam Hussein and he was importing vast quantities of oil from Iraq into America. No wonder the Queen was worried.' When a friend in the oil business raised his association with one of Saddam's right hand men with Steve Wyatt, the usually amenable Texan was unforthcoming. 'That,' Steve Wyatt told Dyer O'Connor firmly, 'is a no-go area.'

As fighting broke out in the Gulf War, the
Sunday Times
took the royals to task for their failure to give a lead to the nation. Fergie, in particular, was still pursuing pleasurable activities at this crucial time, jetting off to Switzerland on a skiing holiday and, according to the paper, 'playing with her gang, very publicly, at a high-spirited dinner in a London restaurant'.

Soon afterwards, an executive told the editor, Andrew Neil, that Fergie had approached his wife at a party. 'Can you get News International off my back?' the Duchess enquired. Neil mentioned the incident to Rupert Murdoch, who was unperturbed. According to his butler Philip Townsend, he thought the Queen's daughter-in-law was a 'nice, jolly girl'. 'A few years ago she would have been propping up the bar in a pub,' Murdoch added, 'and you wouldn't have looked twice at her.'

Just about everyone in Britain was looking at her now, thanks to the efforts of her financial adviser.

JOHNNY Bryan was like a man playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded. But after St Tropez, it was discovered that he was mainly firing very noisy blanks. His language, though, could be ballistic. 'She's not some dead common f***ing trashy little model,' he stormed at the height of the
Harpers & Queen
fiasco. 'She's a member of the Royal Family.' Every time he made an utterance on Fergie's behalf, she moved perceptibly closer to the outer darkness. His actions baffled his friends, delighted his enemies and alienated anyone in the middle.

Anthony John Adrian Bryan was born at Wilmington, Delaware, on 30 June, 1955. His father Tony was English by birth but after graduating from the Harvard Business School he started work in America. His mother Lyda, now Mrs Gerry Redmond, was from St Louis, Missouri. Johnny was brought up on Long Island, New York, until his parents divorced in 1964 and he moved to Texas.

Tony's second wife was Josephine Abercrombie, a Houston heiress. This marriage ended in a headline-making divorce when Tony had an affair with Pamela Sakowitz, wife of the apartment store tycoon, Robert Sakowitz. Robert grew suspicious and consulted Oscar Wyatt Junior, his brother-in-law and neighbour in River Oaks Boulevard.

Oscar, whose sons Steve and Douglas were later involved in a long-running legal feud with their uncle over the family fortune, advised him to consult a private eye.

'Robert Sakowitz hired an investigator who had a very sophisticated message interceptor,' said Tom Alexander, Pamela's attorney. 'He put this on the home phone at River Oaks with a relay in the garage. It was plugged into the telephone line and it was voice-activated, which was very unusual at the time.

'Pamela discovered it when she caught him in the garage listening to the tapes. Robert admitted that he was referred to this particular operative by Oscar Wyatt. They were not always such enemies.' Inadvertently, phone-snooping thus made its first appearance in the royal story through the Wyatt-Bryan connection.

Tony married Pamela in 1978, but this marriage was no more successful than the others, it is perhaps no coincidence that his father seemed to single out wealthy, influential and sometimes married women for conquests, me included,' said Pamela from her new home at Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, 'I think John has the same approach. I think he is head over heels for her, but I have to say, with regret, that the fact that she is married to the Queen's son and has access to future millions will have helped.'

When Tony got married for the fourth time in May, 1992, one of the guests turned to his daughter Pamela at the reception and said: 'Why isn't Johnny here?'

'Oh, he's helping the Duchess move house into Romenda Lodge,' Pamela replied.

'Hang on, this is his father's wedding,' said the guest, it's not as if she is having to do it with a roof-rack across Fulham. I mean, she has staff to help her do things like that.'

This was precisely why Bryan needed to be on hand. He wanted to be indispensable.

Wyatt had always retained his freedom. 'He was like Paddy McNally,' said a friend. 'She could not get him.' But Bryan had developed a completely different strategy: he was always available, always taking charge. Bald head glistening, he was at the centre of the maelstrom, even if it were largely of his own making. He was the honest broker trying to sort things out as a friend of both Andrew and Fergie or, alternately, the Duchess's financial adviser winning a fair deal for her from the 'arrogant assholes' at Buckingham Palace. 'We all knew what Johnny Bryan was up to ages ago,' said his friend, the
Spectator
columnist Taki. 'All that "financial adviser" stuff had me laughing my socks off.'

Those who were baffled by his hold over the Duchess did not understand her very well. Their relationship had cost Fergie more than one friendship but she seemed oblivious to the dangers. 'She likes being controlled and he would say no where Andrew would never say no,' said a former friend. 'They had a common bond through their family backgrounds. She can twist her father around her little finger - he has no control over her at all - and her mother is more like an old friend. Fergie has never had the security of a proper family life so she looked to other people for it. John Bryan came from a broken home - three, in fact - and he understood her needs. He watched her every move and told her off like a little girl.'

At Balmoral, Diana had warned Fergie that Johnny Bryan was an even worse influence than her father. 'Diana did not spare her feelings,' said a friend. 'She warned her that he was trouble. When Fergie defended him, saying he was fixing up her debts, Diana offered to help in that direction.' Fergie listened reluctantly. 'She feared they would take the children away from her,' said the friend. ' "They're not getting my children," she said - and repeated it over and over again every time Diana suggested she get some professional help.'

Custody was a particularly sensitive issue in Fergie's family. Her father had been granted custody of Fergie and her sister Jane as teenagers after Susie had run off with Hector Barrantes. Jane had lost her children Seamus and Ayesha in a very public divorce in Australia a year earlier. The power of the Palace frightened Fergie once it was explained to her that 'the princesses belong to England'.

'Sarah York is not as tough as Diana,' said one who knows them both. 'Her action was that of a desperate woman trying to save herself. She wanted to be free. It would never have occurred to her that she would be condemned far more viciously than the Princess of Wales.

In the months leading up to the separation, Fergie had taken an active dislike to Diana's squeaky-clean image. She called her Miss Perfect or Miss Goody Two Shoes. 'Fergie was insanely jealous of the Princess of Wales,' said a reliable Sunninghill source. 'She used to watch videos of Diana's news footage and throw things at the television screen. She would scream and shout about her all the time.'

Three days before the St Tropez pictures were published, Diana had addressed a conference on alcohol and drug dependence. 'Addiction is a fast-growing malignancy which destroys almost everything in its path,' she said. 'Addicts can only be successfully helped if they are prepared to tackle reality. They will only try to do that if they believe that there is a chance of succeeding. Sadly, many people still regard addiction as a moral weakness.'

The distressed Duchess could not have had a better counsellor. Diana was speaking with a great deal of practical experience through her role as patron of the Turning Point charity. Diana knew that Fergie's life was out of control and that her mood swings were symptoms of an emotional disturbance. With the Princess's encouragement, she finally took the initiative and began sessions of therapy at the Group Analytic Practice at Paddington in West London.

Her father's problems, however, continued to multiply. He was finally dropped as Prince Charles's polo manager after twenty-one years of unpaid service when the Prince decided to forsake high-goal polo in favour of less competitive matches. By coincidence, Major Ron's affair with the social-climbing brunette Lesley Player had just been revealed in her book
MY STORY: The Duchess of York, Her Father and Me.