‘Camilla? She’s a bloody brick’
She’ll be desperately worried, but the Queen will be with Charles every step of the way. And, says the Mail’s royal editor who knows Camilla so well, their ability to laugh together will be a vital tonic during this crisis
FRIENDSHIP, love and respect. That’s what makes them tick,’ a close friend of the King and Queen told me recently. ‘They are quite different people in many ways, but at the heart of it you have two people who just really love and respect each other and still laugh an awful lot. It’s genuinely sweet.’
It’s a verdict emphasised by Annabel elliot, Camilla’s sister, who described them in a BBC interview last month as ‘yin and yang’, but an utterly ‘brilliant’ team. And it’s why I have no doubt that Queen Camilla will be more of a rock than ever to the King over the difficult months to come.
Of course, the distressing news that her husband has been diagnosed with cancer will come as a huge blow to Her Majesty.
But if any evidence were needed of how stoic the Queen is, it should be noted that she has known the news for about a week. And not only did she undertake four public engagements on consecutive days last week, but even opened a Maggie’s cancer care unit on Wednesday knowing that her beloved husband was about to embark on a fight of his own.
Camilla, who has been patron of the charity since 2008 insisted on meeting her commitment at the new Maggie’s royal Free Hospital in north-West London without a hint of her inner turmoil, tactfully telling patients who enquired after the King’s health: ‘He’s getting on, doing his best, thank goodness.’
She also attended an event in Swindon on Tuesday, Bath on Thursday and Cambridge on Friday, where she smiled and chatted away about her heartfelt admiration for the nation’s army of volunteers and her passion for Strictly Come Dancing.
As a royal source says: ‘She’s made of strong stuff.’
From the moment they first fell in love in their early 20s, Charles and Camilla’s lives have been inextricably entwined. While theirs has not been a conventional love story — indeed at one point the late Queen elizabeth feared the couple’s passion could prove the downfall of the monarchy — it is one which, ultimately, may be considered one of the most enduring.
Indeed, Their Majesties are due to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary next year, a landmark which many would have thought utterly impossible once upon a time.
But the Queen is also the very definition of the British stiff upper lip and someone who takes things very much in her stride.
HER approach to this devastating news will, I am sure, be calm and pragmatic, and she will insist on being there by her husband’s side, supporting him every step of the way.
I can reveal she was with him last night at Clarence House as he returned to London to begin out- patient hospital treatment. And I am told that while she is understandably concerned and preparing to play ‘an important role in supporting the King throughout his period of treatment’, she plans to continue with a full programme of public duties at the same time.
That British stiff upper lip again. ‘She’s a bloody brick,’ a friend says. Ironically, in the early days of their marriage it was Charles who was more protective of Camilla, knowing the enormity of what she had taken on to be by his side.
During their first official tour to the U. S. following their 2005 wedding, I watched as the future king instinctively reached out across the aisle of our plane and squeezed his wife’s shaking hand as we took off. He knew how terrified she was of flying —although I also subsequently heard him yelp during one particularly bumpy flight: ‘Darling, please don’t hold me quite so hard!’
Over the years, though, Camilla has grown in confidence under the often cruel public spotlight and earned admiration for her work ethic in taking on unfashionable causes.
It’s not always been plain sailing, of course. Camilla’s relationship with William and Harry has always been particularly complex.
But, privately, William does acknowledge how happy Camilla has made their father and is appreciative of the fact that she has never tried to interfere in their lives. There’s also admiration for the way that she has diligently embraced royal duties, at a time of life when most would be slowing down, without a squeak of complaint.
‘The King and Queen know what their roles are, why they are doing it and what they want to achieve. She has become increasingly bold in the work she does, seizing on difficult issues such as domestic violence, but doesn’t tread on his toes. They work well together and there’s a lot of mutual trust,’ the friend said.
That same bond is evident in private as well. ‘They get on, they
share the same sense of humour. they have the same interests — the countryside, walking, their dogs . . . and, yes, the queen knows when to beat a hasty retreat, too. She knows when to give him his space,’ another source adds.
While she is fiercely supportive of her husband’s devotion to the causes he holds dear, Camilla is also not above affectionately pricking that earnestness every now and again.
On more than one occasion over the years I’ve caught her eye as her husband waxes lyrical over a cause close to his heart, a knowing smile flickering on her lips and a mischievous glint in her eye.
During an official visit to egypt several years ago, the entire royal entourage was forced to rough it somewhat in modest mud brick houses because Charles was so keen to visit an eco-friendly, electricity-free village.
His wife confided in me later, amid jokey eye-rolling, that the absence of plug sockets was ‘all well and good if you don’t need to use a blooming hair dryer’.
But don’t mistake her ability to laugh at the absurdities of the position she has found herself in as a sign of casual disdain. queen Camilla is fiercely loyal to ‘her man’ — and woe betide anyone who disrespects him. ‘It sounds so horribly clichéd but she genuinely respects her husband, his drive, his passion to change the world for the better,’ says another confidante.
‘She’s his fiercest champion and no one should ever underestimate her loyalty to him. they come as a team.’
I have never, in all my years working with her, heard Camilla ever refer to her husband as anything less than ‘His royal Highness, the Prince, the King or His Majesty’, even in private.
‘She has huge respect for her husband as a King, as well as a man, and the institution of the monarchy,’ another source adds. ‘that’s something queen elizabeth came to admire, too.’
AND one friend tells me that if Camilla is seen to be tolerant of her husband’s quirks, then he is equally patient with hers. ‘ He has brought, how shall I put it, a little discipline to her, um, somewhat disorganised routine,’ the friend remarked wryly, with a nod to Camilla’s notorious untidiness and previously rather ‘relaxed’ attitude to life.
Of course, there is occasionally friction. the King can get tetchy when his wife chats too much. She wishes he would slow down, just a touch. But these are minor, run-ofthe-mill marital squabbles in the scheme of things and the King is clearly grateful to have someone to share this rather strange and sometimes lonely life with.
One only had to see the smile of undisguised pride that lit up his face when he saw her walk out in her Coronation finery at Buckingham Palace last May to understand just how much she means to him.
they still own separate homes: Camilla has ray Mill, in Wiltshire, which she bought as a single woman and where she enjoys an informal existence away from the rigours of Palace life, while Charles still adores the formal/informality of Highgrove, in nearby Gloucestershire.
But they are still limpet-close, confident enough in their relationship that they can simply sit in a room, reading, without saying a word — just the occasional smile.
Charles has also embraced Camilla’s family. He is close to her sister, Annabel, who lost her husband to illness just days before the Coronation last year. And he adores Camilla’s children, tom and Laura, as well as her five grandchildren.
During an interview five years ago Camilla told me how her husband was a brilliant story-teller, regularly reading the children bedtime stories, particularly Harry Potter, and doing all the different voices for them. they were always mesmerised, she said.
It’s a side to the King few hear about. Above all there is laughter. the kind of painful, gut-wrenching laughter that leaves you weak the knees. On royal engagements you will often see the couple crying at a shared joke, corpsing again and again as they catch each other’s eye — no mean feat after 18 years of marriage — especially when things don’t quite go to plan.
Laughter is something the couple will need more than ever as they face the King’s current health crisis. And like everything in life, it is something they will approach together, united. King and queen, but, more importantly, husband and wife.