Spare

Pa instantly got upset. He began shouting that Willy was paranoid. We both were. Just because we were getting bad press, and he was getting good, that didn’t mean his staff was behind it.

But we had proof. Reporters, inside actual newsrooms, assuring us that this woman was selling us out.

Pa refused to listen. His response was churlish, pathetic. Granny has her person, why can’t I have mine?

By Granny’s person he meant Angela. Among the many services she performed for Granny, she was said to be skilled at planting stories.

What a rubbish comparison, Willy said. Why would anyone in their right mind, let alone a grown man, want their own Angela?

But Pa just kept saying it. Granny had her person, Granny had her person. High time he had a person too.

I was glad that Willy felt he could still come to me about Pa and Camilla, even after all we’d been through recently. Seeing an opportunity to address our recent tensions, I tried to connect what Pa and Camilla had done to him with what the press had done to Meg.

Willy snapped: I’ve got different issues with you two!

In a blink he shifted all his rage onto me. I can’t recall his exact words, because I was beyond tired from all our fighting, to say nothing of the recent move into Frogmore, and into new offices—and I was focused on the imminent birth of our first child. But I recall every physical detail of the scene. The daffodils out, the new grass sprouting, a jet taking off from Heathrow, heading west, unusually low, its engines making my chest vibrate. I remember thinking how remarkable that I could still hear Willy above that jet. I couldn’t imagine how he had that much anger left after the confrontation in Nott Cott.

He was going on and on and I lost the thread. I couldn’t understand and I stopped trying. I fell silent, waiting for him to subside.

Then I looked back. Meg was coming from the house, directly towards me. I quickly took the phone off speaker, but she’d already heard. And Willy was being so loud, even with the speaker off, she could still hear.

The tears in her eyes glistened in the spring sunshine. I started to say something, but she stopped, shook her head.

Holding her stomach, she turned and walked back to the house.

65.

Doria was staying with us, waiting for the baby to come. Neither she nor Meg ever strayed far. None of us did. We all just sat around waiting, going for the occasional walk, looking at the cows.

When Meg was a week past her due date, the comms team and the Palace began pressuring me. When’s the baby coming? The press can’t wait forever, you know.

Oh. The press is getting frustrated? Heaven forbid!

Meg’s doctor had tried several homeopathic ways to get things moving, but our little visitor was just intent on staying put. (I don’t remember if we ever tried Granny’s suggestion of a bumpy car ride.) Finally we said: Let’s just go and make sure nothing’s wrong. And let’s be prepared in case the doctor says it’s time.

We got into a nondescript people-carrier and crept away from Frogmore without alerting any of the journalists stationed at the gates. It was the last sort of vehicle they suspected we’d be riding in. A short time later we arrived at the Portland Hospital and were spirited into a secret lift, then into a private room. Our doctor walked in, talked it through with us, and said it was time to induce.

Meg was so calm. I was calm too. But I saw two ways of enhancing my calm. One: Nando’s chicken. (Brought by our bodyguards.) Two: A canister of laughing gas beside Meg’s bed. I took several slow, penetrating hits. Meg, bouncing on a giant purple ball, a proven way of giving Nature a push, laughed and rolled her eyes.

I took several more hits and now I was bouncing too.

When her contractions began to quicken, and deepen, a nurse came and tried to give some laughing gas to Meg. There was none left. The nurse looked at the tank, looked at me, and I could see the thought slowly dawning: Gracious, the husband’s had it all.

Sorry, I said meekly.

Meg laughed, the nurse had to laugh, and quickly changed the canister.

Meg climbed into a bath, I turned on soothing music. Deva Premal: she remixed Sanskrit mantras into soulful hymns. (Premal claimed she heard her first mantra in the womb, chanted by her father, and when he was dying she chanted the same mantra to him.) Powerful stuff.

In our overnight bag we had the same electric candles I’d arranged in the garden the night I proposed. Now I placed them around the hospital room. I also set a framed photo of my mother on a little table. Meg’s idea.

Time passed. Hour melted into hour. Minimal dilation.

Meg was doing a lot of deep breathing for pain. Then the deep breathing stopped working. She was in so much pain that she needed an epidural.

The anesthetist hurried in. Off went the music, on went the lights.

Whoa. Vibe change.

He gave her an injection at the base of her spine.