A class act in the saga of Splitsville

SOMEWHERE in the footnotes of history Julia Carling will reside as the

woman who desanctified Diana and, however fleetingly, made a future king

a happy man. In her perfectly judged dismissal of the princess with the

coy but roving eyes, Julia Carling has indirectly strengthened claims by

Charles's allies that he had the royal misfortune to marry a child who

turned into a destructively scheming neurotic.

What we are witnessing now, however, is a silky catfight between two

blonde sophisticates. And languishing in the middle there is a husband

possessed of such vain stupidity he trashes his own ego. It is a tale

which old Hollywood might have called The Fall of the Dumb Ox, starring

a doomed Jean Harlow, triumpant Claudette Colbert and Victor -- victim

of his pectorals -- Mature.

The story so far is this: Will Carling, captain of England's rugby

gladiators, no sooner expresses remorse to his wife for succumbing to a

silly flirtation with the Princess of Wales than he breaks his word that

the friendship is over by dropping off a couple of gifts for the young

princes at Kensington Palace.

And from an ante-room in that wretched household someone slips out to

tell the tabloids. By now Will not only looks like a bounder, he also

appears to be both a dumped and stitched-up plaything, for Diana, who

allegedly instigated the visit, is elsewhere when he calls. In fact, she

is comforting the stricken husband of her acupuncturist at Chelsea's

Royal Brompton Hospital, and doesn't return to the palace until Carling

has long gone.

Well, it might all be innocent, the last episode in fulfilling a

promise made some time ago to the Windsor boys. But somehow it has the

brimstone whiff of revenge directed not so much at Carling -- he is now

a mere humiliated incidental in the row -- but against the gamine Julia

whose public reprimand to Diana was all the more effective because of

its well-modulated politesse.

Julia Carling, in fact, is the only class act to emerge so far in this

unending saga of Splitsville. Her dazzling, confident demeanour is, of

course, the stuff of her former trade in public relations; a quality,

too, which has just landed her a #80,000 contract as a presenter with

Carlton Televison.

Equally, her years of working with poised but emotionally wounded

stars like Tina Turner has taught her how to wrap a photo opportunity

around a heartache. Certainly her response to disclosures of the sly,

thrice-weekly meetings between her husband and the princess was

impeccable.

She gauged correctly that any visible melancholy on her part, although

eliciting sympathy, would mark her down ultimately as a loser. Look how

quickly the media mauled a wan-faced Liz Hurley after Hugh Grant's tacky

night of betrayal.

No, Julia would assume the Perfect Prefect role she had earned at

Oakham School in Rutland in her native Northamptonshire. There she was

raised, the only daughter in a family of three, learning to say her

prayers at night and observe the niceties of the bourgeois well-to-do.

''This has happened to Diana before,'' she said, a reference to the

princess's past use of married men as confidants. Striking just the

right note of regret and censure, Julia Carling added: ''You hope she

won't do these things again, but she obviously does. However, she picked

the wrong couple to do it to this time. She really did.''

So, for a second occasion since their marriage a year ago, Julia had

skilfully deflected attention from her husband's crassness by focusing

it on herself. When Carling lost the England captaincy for referring to

members of the Rugby Football Union as ''57 old farts'' it was she who

charmed the old farts into restoring the title, wistfully lamenting that

it would be sad if Will's dreams should be shattered for the sake of one

careless slip of the tongue.

Now, aged 30, and one year older than Carling, her only mistake in a

sure-footed existence may curiously turn out to be that formidably

stoical aplomb which somehow reduces Carling the Hunk to Carling the

Creep. It could also be argued that she erred in marrying a man so less

clever than she. Will Carling's intellectual muscle would scarcely fill

a jockstrap, but love makes everyone slightly potty and within one month

of dating, Julia had accepted Will Carling's proposal of marriage.

''We had a very traditional church wedding that meant a lot because

this was the way I had been brought up,'' she says now. ''In fact, when

we came back from honeymoon that was the first time Will and I had lived

together. I felt very strongly about that.''

Yet in her early twenties, Julia Carling did break out of middle-class

decorum to chuck her place at Goldsmiths' College in London and live for

six years in America with a rock musician called Jeff Beck. But she was

always strict about sexual fidelity and the relationship is said to have

ended when she discovered Beck was having an affair with a Page Three

model.

Today she says of her marriage: ''Will and I are determined to sort

things out but we still have a long way to go. I don't have any

malicious feelings inside me and, contrary to what people may think, I'm

not a hard, aggressive type. But I feel: 'Sod this, I have a life too,

and it's not going to help if I go around looking bereft and

terrible'.''

It worries her, she insists, that the media portrays her as some sort

of no-nonsense icon. ''I'm not at all comfortable with that and the fact

is, as many women know, this is a hell of a thing to endure. Much of the

time I want to go home, watch Coronation Street, and weep. And I still

say my prayers at night, asking God to help us pull through together.''

Julia Carling's final school report noted: A sharp mind, enjoys

debate, offers the novel rather than the predictable answer. One former

pupil remembers her as ''very quiet''; another as ''the most

self-promoting person I ever met''. Not unaware of such comment, she

ruefully confides that she is now regrettably wary of ''friends''.

But people trained in PR worry so much about keeping a broad smile on

the face of truth that one suspects this sometimes leads them into that

cosmetic artifice where truth gets lost in fiction.

Julia Carling admits as much when, surveying the past few weeks, she

says: ''The thing I find most difficult is not being able to express my

deepest feelings because the whole business has become public

property.''

There is no doubt, however, that she has done the House of Windsor a

considerable favour. Up to this Diana's popularity still outstripped

that of Charles, perhaps the most troublesome aspect of their

separation. Now Diana herself has stymied the chances of setting up an

alternative court by allowing herself to be portrayed as predatory,

meddling with other people's marriages, perhaps out of some warped and

wilful discontent.

Curiosity about her fate will remain fervent but already she is being

edged into a social limbo by the Establishment which would rather bow to

a dishevelled monarchy than to one of its own damaged escapees. And on

that day when Diana's royal aura is finally extinguished no-one will

rejoice more than those watchful wives of all her over-flattered fools.