Free Diana in Search of Herself by Sally Bedell Smith Page A

sure of himself with them.” Clarke could see that Johnnie “tried so hard. He would ask them about their games and their pets, but they only answered his questions; they never started a conversation.” In time, though, as Johnnie becamemore comfortable, Diana and Charles “became more relaxed with their father.”
    In his traditional role before the divorce, Johnnie had been free to come and go in the household as he pleased, attending to his duties (farming, local government, army reserves, charitable activities) and his sporting pursuits. Once he was in charge, the inconsistency of his presence became more troubling to Diana. “There were long periods in the evenings and at weekends when Diana was unoccupied and when Johnnie couldn’t always guarantee to be there,” wrote Penny Junor. Diana became noticeably worried whenever her father went away—much as she would when Prince Charles and others she loved had to leave her. “She did fret about Johnnie if he was gone for long,” wrote Junor. “She would always ask, ‘When’s Daddy coming home?’ ” These memories doubtless prompted Diana’s comment to her astrologer Penny Thornton about “constant loneliness,” and Diana’s anxiety about abandonment during her father’s absences may well have led to her hatred of solitude as an adult. From her school days onward, Diana thrived when she was surrounded by other people, which brought her relief from the emptiness she said she felt on her own.
    In later years, both Diana and her brother spoke openly of their love for their father. In the view of their cousin Robert Spencer, Diana was “particularly fond of her father, especially since he was the parent left behind.” Indeed, one of the more unjust calumnies made in the tabloid press was James Whitaker’s assertion that “to be left in the custody of a man they knew had been unkind to their mother was a burden [the Spencer children] had to endure.” When Diana was in the throes of her own difficult marriage, however, she did express resentment of her father, complaining to Penny Thornton—unfairly, it seems—that he had been “distant and remote, and if he wasn’t being unreachable, he was being angry and intolerant.” According to Thornton, Diana felt that her father “had driven her mother away, yet at the same time she felt utterly abandoned by Frances.”
    Diana’s contradictory feelings were aggravated by the tensions surrounding weekend visits to her mother. Mary Clarke, who accompanied Diana on these unsettling journeys, recalled that she invariably said on her departure, “Poor Daddy, I feel so sad leaving him on his own”; after parting from her mother, as well: “Poor Mummy, I feel so sad leaving her on her own.” Until the Morton revelations, little else was said about these visits. In her 1982 biography of Diana, Penny Junor had emphasized the stoicism shown by both parents and children. Before and after the weekend visits, “there were no tears,” wrote Junor, “and Frances didn’t allow herself to show any emotion either.… Both parents did their utmost to make their separation as easy and painless as possible for the children.”
    Diana’s own recollections were considerably more raw: “I can remember Mummy crying an awful lot,” Diana recalled. The moment Diana and her brother arrived for the weekend, Frances began to weep. When the children asked why she was crying, she told them that she couldn’t bear to have them leave after only a day—a reply that was “devastating” to nine-year-old Diana. According to one of Diana’s close friends, Diana said that in addition to weeping, Frances denigrated Johnnie during their visits. Not only did Diana have to deal with knowing her mother had been so dissatisfied that she had left home, she also had to console Frances while feeling conflicted about her father—a heavy load for a young girl.
    The immediate consequences of these traumatic weekend trips, according to Mary