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Back in London this winter, things have not been much better. Fast-moving Freelance Photographer Mauro Carraro, 23, who quit hunting crime shots 18 months ago to concentrate on the much more profitable ambushing of royals, finally got a picture of Andrew that was good enough for the Mirror's front page. Carraro hustles hard for his art and the $25,000 or so a year it brings him. During one brief period this winter he broke off the chase for Koo at the Queen's retreat at Sandringham and flew to Switzerland, where Koo was rumored to be skiing. Then it was back to London, and off on a fast rumble to Sandringham again, in the sort of automotive projectile that is essential for royal-chasing, a Golf GTI that Carraro says will go more than 100 m.p.h. Diana was supposed to be there taking riding lessons (family tradition suggests that a Windsor Queen should be able to ride, but the Princess, who fell from a horse when she was small, has no love for the sport). Carraro's information was accurate. After dodging hordes of amateur cameramen and the police, and being scared silly by the Queen's pack of search dogs as he hid with two other cameramen in bushes near the Sandringham riding fields, he clicked off $1,500 worth of shots of Diana, the Queen and Charles on horseback. "Charles saw us, and he was fuming," Carraro recalled happily. "We ran like hell. There are a lot of fast moves in this business."
The $1,500 smudge paid expenses and kept Carraro in motion. After a day at home he flew back to Switzerland to stalk Charles and Diana on their ski trip. But for Carraro and several dozen other English Continental photographers, the assignment paid off only in vast Alps of aggro (British slang for aggravation). The Princess of Wales by now had reached her choking point. She refused to play her role as royal photo model. After a week of confusion and rancor, the London tabs had little to show for their efforts except a few murmurs from Prince Charles ("Please darling, please darling"), some shots made immediately after he said, "Now I'm going to blow my nose for everyone to photograph," and huffily written stories of scary auto chases and photographers being roughed up by bodyguards.
The hunters and, presumably, the hunted went home in sour moods, in time to read News of the World headlines about Diana's supposed onrushing emotional breakdown. The story quoted University of Washington Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Holmes as saying that Diana had an 80% chance of becoming ill. On his Holmes-Rahe scale, which rates such stressful occurrences as marriage (50), trouble with in-laws (29) and change of financial state (38), Diana scored "an alarming 417." This put her in peril, the doctor was quoted as saying, of ailments ranging from "a prolonged cold to an obsessive-compulsive disorder such as the need to see your shoes precisely arranged."
It was, perhaps, time to reflect on a comment by Lacey, one of the calmest and most benign of the journalists who write about the monarchy: "One must not reveal too much of the mystery because the royals have faults, dishonesties, nastinesses like anyone else. A lot of us happen to think that the illusions and idealization which surround this family is quite a healthy thing. Everyone needs vehicles for their social dreams."