Spare

Harold, you must listen to me! I just want you to be happy, Harold. I swear….I swear on Mummy’s life.

He stopped. I stopped. Pa stopped.

He’d gone there.

He’d used the secret code, the universal password. Ever since we were boys those three words were to be used only in times of extreme crisis. On Mummy’s life. For nearly twenty-five years we’d reserved that soul-crushing vow for times when one of us needed to be heard, to be believed, quickly. For times when nothing else would do.

It stopped me cold, as it was meant to. Not because he’d used it, but because it didn’t work. I simply didn’t believe him, didn’t fully trust him. And vice versa. He saw it too. He saw that we were in a place of such hurt and doubt that even those sacred words couldn’t set us free.

How lost we are, I thought. How far we’ve strayed. How much damage has been done to our love, our bond, and why? All because a dreadful mob of dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists along Fleet Street feel the need to get their jollies and plump their profits—and work out their personal issues—by tormenting one very large, very ancient, very dysfunctional family.

Willy wasn’t quite ready to accept defeat. I’ve felt properly sick and ill after everything that’s happened and—and…I swear to you now on Mummy’s life that I just want you to be happy.

My voice broke as I told him softly: I really don’t think you do.

My mind suddenly flooded with memories of our relationship. But one in particular was crystalline. Willy and I, years before in Spain. A beautiful valley, the air glittery with that uncommonly clear Mediterranean light, the two of us kneeling behind a green canvas wall as the first hunting horns sounded. Lowering our flat caps as the first partridges burst towards us, bang bang, a few falling, handing our guns to the loaders, who handed us new ones, bang bang, more falling, passing our guns back, our shirts darkening with sweat, the ground filling with birds that would feed nearby villages for weeks, bang, one last shot, neither of us able to miss, then standing at last, drenched, starved, happy, because we were young and together and this was our place, our one true space, away from Them and close to Nature. It was such a transcendent moment that we turned and did that rarest of things—we hugged. Really hugged.

But now I saw that even our finest moments, and my best memories, somehow involved death. Our lives were built on death, our brightest days shadowed by it. Looking back, I didn’t see spots of time, but dances with death. I saw how we steeped ourselves in it. We christened and crowned, graduated and married, passed out and passed over our beloveds’ bones. Windsor Castle itself was a tomb, the walls filled with ancestors. The Tower of London was held together with the blood of animals, used by the original builders a thousand years ago to temper the mortar between the bricks. Outsiders called us a cult, but maybe we were a death cult, and wasn’t that a little bit more depraved? Even after laying Grandpa to rest, had we not had our fill? Why were we here, lurking along the edge of that “undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveller returns”?

Though maybe that’s a more apt description of America.

Willy was still talking, Pa was talking over him, and I could no longer hear a word they said. I was already gone, already on my way to California, a voice in my head saying: Enough death—enough.

When is someone in this family going to break free and live?

87.

It was slightly easier this time. Maybe because we were an ocean away from the old chaos and stress.

When the big day came we were both surer, calmer—steadier. What bliss, we said, not having to worry about timing, protocols, journalists at the front gate.

We drove calmly, sanely to the hospital, where our bodyguards once again fed us. This time they brought burgers and fries from In-N-Out. And fajitas from a local Mexican restaurant for Meg. We ate and ate and then did the Baby Mama dance around the hospital room.

Nothing but joy and love in that room.

Still, after many hours Meg asked the doctor: When?

Soon. We’re close.

This time I didn’t touch the laughing gas. (Because there was none.) I was fully present. I was with Meg through every push.

When the doctor said it was a matter of minutes, I told Meg that I wanted mine to be the first face our little girl saw.

We knew we were having a daughter.

Meg nodded, squeezed my hand.

I went and stood beside the doctor. We both crouched. As if about to pray.

The doctor called out: The head is crowning.