Spare

But another part of me felt hugely ambitious. People assumed that the Spare wouldn’t or shouldn’t have any ambition. People assumed that royals generally had no career desires or anxieties. You’re royal, everything’s done for you, why worry? But in fact I worried quite a lot about making my own way, finding my purpose in this world. I didn’t want to be one of those cocktail-slurping, eyeroll-causing sloths everyone avoided at family gatherings. There had been plenty of those in my family, going back centuries.

Pa, in fact, might’ve become one. He’d always been discouraged from hard work, he told me. He’d been advised that the Heir shouldn’t “do too much,” shouldn’t try too hard, for fear of outshining the monarch. But he’d rebelled, listened to his inner voice, discovered work that excited him.

He wanted that for me.

That was why he didn’t press me to go to university. He knew it wasn’t in my DNA. Not that I was anti-university, per se. In fact, the University of Bristol looked interesting. I’d pored over its literature, even considered a course in art history. (Lots of pretty girls took that subject.) But I just couldn’t picture myself spending years bent over a book. My Eton housemaster couldn’t either. He’d told me straight-out: You’re not the university type, Harry. Now Pa added his assent. It was no secret, he said gently, that I wasn’t the “family scholar.”

He didn’t mean it as a dig. Still, I winced.

He and I went round and round, and in my head I went back and forth, and by a process of elimination we landed on the Army. It made sense. It aligned with my desire to be outside the box, to disappear. The military would take me away from the prying eyes of the public and the press. But it also fitted with my hope of making a difference.

And it accorded with my personality. My prized toys as a boy had always been miniature soldiers. I’d spent thousands of hours planning and waging epic battles with them at Kensington Palace and in Highgrove’s Rosemary Verey–designed gardens. I’d also treated every game of paintball as though the future of the Commonwealth depended on the outcome.

Pa smiled. Yes, darling boy. The Army sounds like just the thing.

But first, he added…

Many people took a gap year as a matter of course. Pa, however, considered a gap year to be one of the most formative periods in a person’s life.

See the world, darling boy! Have adventures.

So I sat down with Marko and tried to decide what those adventures might look like. We settled first on Australia. Spend half the year working on a farm.

Excellent.

As for the second half of the year, Africa. I told Marko I’d like to join the fight against AIDS. That this would be an homage to Mummy, an explicit continuation of her work, didn’t need to be spelled out.

Marko went away, did some research, came back to me and said: Lesotho.

Never heard of it, I confessed.

He educated me. Landlocked country. Lovely country. Bordering South Africa. Lots of need, loads of work to be done.

I was overjoyed. A plan—at last.

Soon after, I visited Henners. A weekend in Edinburgh. Autumn 2002. We went to a restaurant and I told him all about it. Good for you, Haz! He was taking a gap year as well, in East Africa. Uganda, as I recall. Working in a rural school. At the moment, however, he was working a part-time job—at Ludgrove. Working as a stooge. (The Ludgrovian word for “handyman.”) It was a very cool job, he said. He got to be with kids, got to fix things all over the grounds.

Plus, I teased him: All the free strawberries and carrots you can eat!

But he was quite serious about it. I like teaching, Haz.

Oh.

We talked excitedly about Africa, made plans to meet up there. After Uganda, after college, Henners too would probably go into the Army. He was going to be a Green Jacket. It wasn’t really a decision; his family had been in uniform for generations. We talked about meeting up there too. Maybe, we said, we’ll find ourselves side by side one day, marching into battle or helping people on the other side of the world.

The future. We wondered aloud what it held. I worried about it, but not Henners. He didn’t take the future seriously, didn’t take anything seriously. Life as it comes, Haz. That was Henners, always and forever. I envied his tranquility.

For now, however, he was heading to one of Edinburgh’s casinos. He asked if I wanted to come along. Ah, can’t, I said. I couldn’t possibly be seen in a casino. It would cause a huge scandal.

Too bad, he said.

Cheers, we both said, promising to talk again soon.