years later, Camilla’s biographer would claim that Charles had written to her one week before her wedding, urging her not to marry – but no letter has been produced.)
From the outset, the Parker Bowles’s marriage was unusual. Army officers expected their wives to play their part in regimental life, tolerate regular relocations of home, and maintain appropriate standards in dress and housekeeping. Among her husband’s fellow officers, Camilla was known to avoid all that, not least because, as he admitted to his friends, ‘she’s bone idle’. Andrew Parker Bowles circumnavigated their untidy country home by living in London during the week.
‘Camilla was unhappy,’ observed a friend, ‘because Andrew was always putting her down.’ Sensing her disdain for army life, Parker Bowles avoided any permanent relocations abroad, not least because he was conducting successive affairs in London. By 1979, after he had been posted to Rhodesia as the last military liaison officer before independence, Camilla started seeing Charles. Few were shocked. Her family was known for adultery, desertion and divorce, and Parker Bowles made no protest. On the contrary, he preferred a bachelor’s life in Rhodesia while his wife enjoyed Wiltshire – and Wales. For Charles, Camilla was a relief after Amanda Knatchbull, Earl Mountbatten’s granddaughter, had rejected his proposal of marriage.
At the time, Mrs Parker Bowles was the perfect match for Charles. Sexually experienced, she was content to accommodate herself to his demands and his schedule – polo, shooting, fishing and his royal duties. Most of all, she showed genuine interest in everything he said. Her husband only became aware how far the relationship had progressed when in 1980 he invited his wife to Salisbury, Rhodesia’s capital. One week later, she welcomed Charles as the queen’s representative at the country’s independence ceremonies. While Parker Bowles spent most days in a helicopter in the company of an attractive American woman photographer (and was also beginning an affair with Charlotte Hambro, the married sister of Nicholas Soames), gossip columnists hinted that Camilla was the perfect escort for Charles. Typical of the risqué nature of their social set, Charlotte’s husband Richard was the brother of Rupert Hambro, Camilla’s first serious boyfriend. Tactful understanding precluded anyone frowning over Andrew’s behaviour. ‘Always one of the lads, but not a lad himself,’ said a fellow officer with a smile. Parker Bowles, promoted to major, may have resented the suggestion that Charles and Camilla had flown out to Rhodesia together and had isolated themselves in Charles’s private quarters on the plane, amid sniggers that they were joining the mile-high club, but generally her affair was acceptable so long as it remained discreet.
Charles broke that rule after all three had returned from Africa and met again at the annual Cirencester Ball. Parker Bowles watched the prince kiss Camilla passionately while dancing with her. ‘HRH is very fond of my wife,’ he told friends flatly, ‘and she appears very fond of him.’ Parker Bowles’s circle assumed that he was thrilled that Charles was in love with his wife. Their marriage could continue so long as the façade did not jeopardise his good relations with the queen, and especially the queen mother. Invitations from Buckingham Palace for shooting and fishing holidays, and hospitality at Ascot and Cheltenham, were invaluable. Nor was he perturbed when in 1980 Charles bought Highgrove, near Parker Bowles’s family home in Gloucestershire. For their part, Charles and Camilla felt no guilt about their affair until February 1981, when he announced his engagement to Diana.
Both Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles individually invited Diana for lunches. Camilla’s much-publicised meeting with Charles’s fiancée took place at a well-known London restaurant. By contrast, Andrew’s lunch, at the Turf Club, was discreet. Both were diplomatic successes. Thereafter, Charles and Diana stayed for weekends with the Parker Bowleses. On one occasion, in front of others, Andrew told Charles, ‘Diana is the girl for you.’ Charles had nodded in appreciation, and as a signal of their friendship replied, ‘You must tell me if I’m ever pompous.’
Andrew believed that, with the advent of Diana, his wife had decided to break off her relationship with Charles. When invited by mutual friends for dinner, she would ask, ‘Are the Waleses coming?’ If the answer was yes, she would refuse the invitation. ‘It’s easier if we don’t meet,’ she told her husband. Some were suspicious about such protests, especially after Diana’s denunciation of Camilla in 1992 and her allegation that Camilla had slept with Charles on the night before their wedding. Somewhat bewildered, Parker Bowles asked his friends whether they recalled that night. All would honestly reply that Camilla returned to the barracks with him from the party at Buckingham Palace. The story had in fact been invented by Stephen Barry, another of Charles’s disgruntled junior valets.
By the mid-1980s, the truth had become murky. Charles’s relationship with Diana collapsed after the birth of Harry in 1984. Clearly unsuited to his young wife, the prince sought comfort and advice, especially from Camilla. In 1986 Andrew Parker Bowles began a passionate affair with Rosemary Pitman, the wife of a friend and fellow officer. He had finally found true happiness, but, to protect his young children and his army career, he resisted divorce. In parallel, Camilla’s relationship with the heir to the throne intensified. ‘Charles,’ Diana told Richard Kay, ‘is obsessed by Camilla’s tits, and I haven’t got tits as big as Camilla’s.’
Although Kay was close to Diana, he was simultaneously forging a good relationship with Mark Bolland, an advantage to Charles when, in August 1996, on the eve of his decree nisi, the News of the World published a blurred shot showing Charles and Camilla in a garden in south Wales. The caption complimented Camilla on her appearance, because she was smiling rather than scowling: the implication was obvious. Shortly after, Charles took Camilla to a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. Journalists were waiting. The tip-off, Charles assumed, had come from Bolland. By this time, just a few weeks into Bolland’s new job, Camilla was speaking about the next steps to him, Hilary Browne-Wilkinson and Fiona Shackleton up to six times a day. Besides gaining favourable mentions in the media, Camilla said, her priority was Richard Aylard’s removal.
That, Bolland realised, was not Charles’s immediate concern. His employer’s dominant need was to unburden himself about his feelings towards his family and about the harm Diana had done to him. His young ex-wife, he complained, was badly educated, without any O- or A-Levels, and lacked self-discipline. Nor, he added, did she have any interest in theatre, poetry, music or opera. He seemed to have forgotten that in fact Diana loved opera and ballet, and played the piano daily. Her evenings at the pop concerts he so scorned were to raise money for charity.
Such inconsistencies were irrelevant to Charles. All he demanded was that none of his derogatory comments about Diana’s sanity should be quoted to the public. In the narrative he wanted Bolland to create, Camilla was perfect, while he was suffering the burden of dutifully going through life without the woman he loved. Bolland was unsure. Was Charles’s relationship with Camilla really the big love story, as Diana made out? Or had two middle-aged people, at the tail end of their marriages, found each other a convenient staging post? Either way, he was certain that his employer was not ideal husband material, and suspected that he could never live permanently with any woman. Even Michael Fawcett warned him against forcing Camilla onto Charles.
Bolland decided that Fawcett’s doubts could be discounted. Jealous of others, the valet wanted to be the only person in Charles’s life. The reality about Charles and Camilla’s relationship could be heard on the Camillagate tape. Charles’s reference to being Camilla’s tampon was not just unusual, but was calculated to gain her sympathy. Being treated as a child suited him. ‘My role in life is to support you and love you,’ she cooed. When Charles told her, ‘I need you several times a week,’ she replied, ‘I need you all the week, all the time.’ If the young Diana was the mouse, Camilla was catnip. Charles would always return to Camilla because she gave him what he needed emotionally, and was a skilled mistress. The twist was the layers of deceit on which their relationship had been built: the lies uttered by his staff, those assigned to protect them, and the friends who provided houses for their trysts.
In September 1996, during the prime
