Spare

Sometimes hard, sometimes tedious, mustering could be unexpectedly emotional. Young females were easier, they went where you nudged them, but young males didn’t care for being bossed around, and what they really didn’t like was being split from their mums. They cried, moaned, sometimes charged you. A wildly swung horn could ruin a limb or sever an artery. But I wasn’t afraid. Instead…I was empathetic. And the young males seemed to know.

The one job I wouldn’t do, the one piece of hard work I shied from, was snipping balls. Every time George brought out that long shiny blade I’d raise my hands. No, mate, can’t do it.

Suit yourself.

At day’s end I’d take a scalding shower, eat a gargantuan supper, then sit with George on the porch, rolling cigarettes, sipping cold beers. Sometimes we’d listen to his small CD player, which made me think of Pa’s wireless. Or Henners. He and the other boy went to borrow another CD player…Often we’d just sit gazing into the distance. The land was so tabletop flat you could see thunderstorms brewing hours ahead of when they arrived, the first spidery bolts flicking the far-off land. As the bolts got thicker, and closer, wind would race through the house, ruffling the curtains. Then the rooms would flutter with white light. The first thunderclaps would shake the furniture. Finally, the deluge. George would sigh. His parents would sigh. Rain was grass, rain was fat. Rain was money.

If it didn’t rain, that also felt like a blessing, because after a windstorm the clear sky would be peppered with stars. I’d point out to George what the gang in Botswana had pointed out to me. See that bright one next to the moon? That’s Venus. And over there, that’s Scorpius—best place to see it is the southern hemisphere. And there’s Pleiades. And that’s Sirius—brightest star in the sky. And there’s Orion: the Hunter. All comes down to hunting, doesn’t it? Hunters, hunted…

What’s that, Harry?

Nothing, mate.

The thing I found endlessly mesmerizing about the stars was how far away they all were. The light you saw was born hundreds of centuries ago. In other words, looking at a star, you were looking at the past, at a time long before anyone you knew or loved had lived.

Or died.

Or disappeared.

George and I usually hit the sack about eight thirty. Often we were too tired to take off our clothes. I was no longer afraid of the dark, I craved it. I slept as if dead, woke as if reborn. Sore, but ready for more.

There were no days off. Between the relentless work, the relentless heat, the relentless cows, I could feel myself being whittled down, lighter each morning by a kilo, quieter by a few dozen words. Even my British accent was being pared away. After six weeks I sounded nothing like Willy and Pa. I sounded more like George.

And dressed a bit like him as well. I took to wearing a slouchy felt cowboy hat like his. I carried one of his old leather whips.

Finally, to go with this new Harry, I acquired a new name. Spike.

It happened like this. My hair had never fully recovered after I’d let my Eton schoolmates shave it. Some strands shot up like summer grass, some lay flat, like lacquered hay. George often pointed at my head and said: You look a right mess! But on a trip to Sydney, to see the Rugby World Cup, I’d made an official appearance at the Taronga Zoo, and I’d been asked to pose for a photo with something called an echidna. A cross between a hedgehog and an anteater, it had hard spiky hair, which was why the zookeepers named it Spike. It looked, as George would say, a right mess.

More to the point, it looked like me. A lot like me. And when George happened to see a photo of me posing with Spike, he yelped.

Haz—that thing’s got your hair!

Thereafter, he never called me anything but Spike. And then my bodyguards took up the chorus. Indeed, they made Spike my code name on the radio. Some even printed up T-shirts, which they wore while guarding me: Spike 2003.

Soon enough my mates at home got wind of this new nickname, and adopted it. I became Spike, when I wasn’t Haz, or Baz, or Prince Jackaroo, or Harold, or Darling Boy, or Scrawny, a nickname given me by some Palace staff. Identity had always been problematic, but with a half dozen formal names and a full dozen nicknames it was turning into a hall of mirrors.