The Sport of Charlie Watching

By Marguerite Johnson

Has the Bonnie Prince picked his future Queen at last?

She was a house guest at Balmoral Castle in September, a pretty girl with an almost pre-Raphaelite air of sweet naturalness, sitting demurely by the River Dee, while Prince Charles fished for salmon. In October, swathed in a sporty green coat and boots, she cheered excitedly from the Ludlow racecourse grandstand as the Prince rode his Irish chaser, Allibar, to a second-place finish in a three-mile steeplechase. By the time the Prince of Wales' 32nd birthday arrived on Nov. 14, Britain was rife with rumors that Charles' engagement to the sunny blond so often at his side, Lady Diana Spencer, 19, was about to be announced.

Charles' birthday came and went, with no engagement announcement from Buckingham Palace. That hardly squelched expectations. Diana, after all, had spent the birthday weekend with the royal family at their country home, Sandringham House. It seemed to be a sure indication that she was a serious contender to become the bride of Britain's future King. Charles himself was besieged by inquiring photographers a few days later when he was walking one of his Labradors. Said the Prince, when asked about a possible betrothal: "You will find out soon enough." With that, Britain's latest national pastime -- the hot-eyed, anything-but-courtly sport of Charlie watching -- reached a fever pitch.

Fleet Street's old-fashioned rotary presses rolled off reams of front pages about the lithesome lass who seemed to have captured the Prince's heart. One photograph showed Diana posing in the bright autumn sunlight, nice legs plainly silhouetted through her diaphanous skirt.

DI is BLUSHING, tittered a tabloid. An other coyly headlined: LADY DIANA'S SLIP.

By day platoons of photographers staked out the kindergarten in London's Pimlico district, where she teaches. By night they stood guard in front of the building in Earl's Court where she shares a flat with three other girls. One morning last week Diana climbed into her red Mini Metro, only to have a roaring posse of press cars take off after her. She burst into tears. Later, the contrite paparazzi slipped a note through the sun roof of her car. The message: "We didn't mean this to happen. Our full apologies."

Meanwhile, Buckingham Palace asked the Sunday Mirror to retract a story claiming that Prince Charles had twice smuggled Lady Diana aboard the royal train for love trysts. "There is not a word of truth in it," insisted a Palace press secretary. The retraction demand originated with Prince Charles, according to the spokesman, but the Queen also "wished this to be done." The highly unusual request indicated a special regard for Lady Diana and a strong desire to protect her reputation.

In pub and parlor, no other topic is of such endless fascination to the British public. One typical observation: "He might decide she's too young for him." A housewife from Lancashire went on the BBC'S popular Today show to warble a special song for the occasion: "Diana divine, my sweetheart sublime." The composition, she explained, was meant to help the romance along and encourage Charles to propose.

The press has hounded Charles' dates ever since his late teens. The Prince has always taken the gossipy accounts of his amorous adventures, whether fanciful or real, in good-natured stride. The pressure has been rather more trying for his girl friends. A few years ago, for example, Lady Jane Wellesley, a self-assured brunet, was discovered to have spent a weekend at one of the royal residences. The press descended en masse on the Chelsea travel agency where she worked. "Get rid of them and don't come back at all if you can't," warned her angry boss. Said a relative afterward: "It was as if she had been found guilty of some ghastly sexual crime or murder or robbery."

Ever since Charles passed 30, an age that he once said would be a good time to marry, speculation has intensified. Britons, obviously, are curious to know who will be their future Queen; they are also concerned that the Prince produce a royal heir. The field is narrowing as eligible girls are married off. Religion also poses a problem in Britain. A constitutional change would be needed before Charles could marry a Catholic, like Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg. The Princess has repeatedly been mentioned as a possible royal match, but quite apart from the religious bar, the two barely know each other.

One of the things that makes Lady Diana a credible bride for Prince Charles is the fact that their families are old friends. The youngest daughter of Earl Spencer, a former equerry to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, she grew up on her father's estate, which is located on the royal family's 20,000-acre Sandringham property near the Norfolk coast. As it happened, it was the Spencers, and not the royal family, who had the heated swimming pool. Charles, his sister Anne and brothers Andrew and Edward were frequently invited over. The Prince helped Diana learn to swim when he was in his late teens and she was a little girl of five or six. Still athletic, Diana likes to bike and ski. She dresses casually and exudes a born-to-the-country-life look. Recently, when asked how she sees herself, she replied: "Well, I'm a normal person, hopefully, who loves life." Friends say she takes her kindergarten teaching job seriously.

One of her main worries about having become a focus of inordinate public attention is that the cameramen who hound her every move might upset the children at her school.

For a time, Charles dated Diana's older sister, Sarah; though she said later that the Prince was "a romantic who falls in love easily," he seems to have just as easily fallen out of it. Diana, on the other hand, is said to have had an adolescent crush on Charles that has now blossomed into serious mutual adulation. But with Charles off to India for a two-week official visit, and no announcement of an engagement yet in sight, Britain seemed to be in store for a long and piquant season of Charlie and Diana watching, the frothier the merrier.

Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/London

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/London

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