Was Henri Paul an MI6 stool-pigeon, paid fat cash wedges to lure Diana to her
state-ordered death? Or was he a seedy, drug-addled, “drunk as a pig”
alcoholic whose arrogance and recklessness did for our beloved princess? All
that Mohamed Al Fayed and Prince Philip will probably ever agree upon about
that long ago August night is the villainy of Henri Paul, the driver of the
Mercedes taken by Dodi and Diana. Lacking a public to deify him, gallant
young sons to defend his memory or a powerful father to avenge his
reputation, all Henri Paul has is Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington. And of
the three people who died in the Place de l’Alma tunnel, Paul is the one
whose character is least besmirched by his report.
Indeed, I recommend its 200-page chapter four as a fascinating insight into
the lives of those like Paul, acting head of security at the Paris Ritz, who
serve and protect the mindlessly rich. The truly wealthy, we learn, disdain
to carry cash or even credit cards: £2,000 was found on Paul’s body because
it was part of his job to trail around the Galleries Lafayette behind Saudi
wives, picking up the tab when they bought up whole rails of clothes.
And far from Henri Paul the cavalier drunk, we see Henri Paul the good and
faithful servant. That fated night he left the Ritz at 7pm, thinking he’d
finished for the day, that Dodi and Diana’s elaborate evening plans were
set. Off-duty, he had a few drinks — four Ricard aperitifs, it is reckoned;
hardly a binge — certain he wouldn’t be returning to the Ritz, let alone
driving, since he was not a chauffeur.
Yet when the call came that Dodi had changed his mind and wanted him back,
Henri Paul doesn’t curse or complain but within 15 minutes is back at his
post.
I have a picture in my head of Paul that long night, his free evening snatched
away, sitting in the Ritz with the other drivers, bodyguards and flunkies,
bored, waiting — always waiting — ashtrays brimming with his cigarillos,
downing another Ricard. Meanwhile, upstairs a pampered couple faffed and
fussed about which fine restaurant to dine in, which exquisite apartment to
sleep in, oblivious to the dogged men whose own bedtimes were governed by
their whims.
Why, anyway, could this famous couple not regard the paparazzi like hungry
seagulls around a trawler — feed them scraps, then ignore their flapping?
Small price to pay, you’d think, for a lifetime of limitless luxury. But
Dodi wanted to play Bond, shake them off with a car chase and impress his
princess. He commanded two decoy cars to leave the front of the Ritz and
Paul to drive the actual getaway car. Given the scale of the plan, what huge
loss of face, of job even, would it have taken for Henri Paul to shrug and
say: “I’ve been drinking, boss. I’d really rather not . . .”
Lord Stevens reveals the pressure upon Paul of working for Mohamed Al Fayed.
Paul’s best friend testifies how he spent his whole summer holiday in Spain
on the phone to work. And he was stressed enough to ask a doctor friend for
Prozac and a drug to make alcohol less palatable and thus curb a drinking
habit that must have begun to worry him.
But Henri Paul’s life stands up to closer scrutiny far more robustly than that
of the Princess or her lover. Paul was a prize-winning pianist, fond of
Schubert and Liszt, a cultured, well-informed man whose modest, tidy
apartment in the Rue des Petits-Champs was filled with works on ecology and
military history, his current-affairs magazines filed in chronological
order.
He kept alcohol there, but only the booze of a sociable man: half-empty
bottles of Martini and Ricard for guests, a couple of beers in the fridge,
some decent champagne. Plus 240 cans of Diet Coke. Besides, Paul had just
passed his annual pilot’s medical, an exhaustive set of tests that would
have shown up full-blown alcoholism. Friends recall he’d go to bed early and
sober the night before every flight.
Flying was his one indulgence. Paul drove an old Mini, disliked showy clothes
and, a friend testifies, “he gave presents that were just right for the
recipient’s personality, and not simply to impress”. Which is more than can
be said of Dodi, with his grotesque, spangled “Tell me yes” ring, picked out
by a servant who Dodi nagged into negotiating a discount.
And anyway the perfidious Princess planned to accept the bling but not the
proposal. Maybe she could wear it on her right hand, Paul Burrell suggested:
“She thought that was a clever solution,” testifies the preening butler.
“She thought I knew the answer to a lot of things.”
The Stevens report resurrects the Diana we had allowed to rest in peace during
the ten years of her sainthood; the needy, damaged, flaky, manipulative and
gullible Diana. Those closest to her seem mostly to be “alternative”
practictioners. The Fayed yacht’s on-board “holistic healer” testifies that
her firm prodding of Diana’s intestines and womb made her certain she was
not pregnant. Some Chinese medicine woman chips in, as does Rita Rogers,
Diana’s personal psychic, who tells her of a premonition that her car brakes
will be tampered with, setting Diana off on a frenzy of paranoia and trips
to BMW dealerships.
And then there are the decisions about her love life, so off-kilter and addled
that only a woman given endless sycophantic approval would pursue them: the
attempts to marry her Muslim lover Hasnat Khan in a Catholic church, her
trips to Pakistan to try Jemima Khan’s lifestyle on for size. How lost she
seems in this report, hopping from cruise to cruise, telling Rosa Monckton
she missed her boys . . . and the gym.
What kind of woman, one wonders, would she have been today at 45, in an era
when celebrity coverage has exploded and turned ever meaner? No one ever
printed an unflattering shot of Diana: her secrets were only betrayed after
her death. But today she’d have her cellulite and liver spots ringed in Heat
magazine, with Grazia speculating about her Botox, her facelift, her
sanity.
For all its rigour, the report will never silence the conspiracy theories
about Diana’s death. Not just those of poor, broken Mohamed Al Fayed but of
her true believers, who will never accept that their goddess died in so
mundane and mortal a manner. But at least Lord Stevens has righted one
injustice: brought clarity and compassion to bear upon the life and death of
Henri Paul.
