Spare

When the wedding did finally take place—without Granny, who chose not to attend—it was almost cathartic for everyone, even me. Standing near the altar I mostly kept my head bowed, eyes on the floor, just as I had during Mummy’s funeral, but I did sneak several long peeks at the groom and the bride and each time I thought: Good for you.

Though, also: Goodbye.

I knew without question that this marriage would take Pa away from us. Not in any real sense, not in any deliberate or malicious way, but nevertheless—away. He was entering a new space, a closed space, a tightly insular space. Willy and I would see less of Pa, I predicted, and that left me with mixed feelings. I didn’t relish losing a second parent, and I had complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who, I believed, had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar. But I saw Pa’s smile and it was hard to argue with that, and harder still to deny the cause: Camilla. I wanted so many things, but I was surprised to discover at their wedding that one of the things I wanted most, still, was for my father to be happy.

In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy.

Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy?

There are published reports that Willy and I snuck out of the church and hung Just Married signs on their car. I don’t think so. I might’ve hung a sign: Be Happy. If I’d thought of it at the time.

I do remember watching them drive off and thinking: They’re happy. They’re really happy.

Damn, I’d like all of us to be happy.

49.

Around this time, just before the wedding, or perhaps just after, I went off with Willy to train with the British Special Boat Service. It wasn’t official training. Just a bit of boys and toys, as we called it. Mostly a lark, though it did grow out of long-standing and solemn tradition.

Our family had always maintained close ties with the British military. Sometimes that meant an official visit, sometimes a casual lunch. Sometimes it meant a private chat with men and women home from the wars. But sometimes it meant taking part in rigorous exercises. Nothing showed respect for the military like doing, or trying to do, what they did.

Such exercises were always kept secret from the press. The military preferred it that way, and God knows the royals did too.

It was Mummy who took Willy and me on our first military exercise—a “killing house” in Herefordshire. The three of us were put into a room, told not to move. Then the room went dark. A squad kicked down the door. They threw flash bangs, scared the devil out of us, which was their aim. They wanted to teach us how to respond “if ever” our lives were in danger.

If ever? That made us laugh. Have you seen our mail?

But this day with Willy was different. Much more physical, more participatory. Less about teaching, more about adrenaline. We raced across Poole Harbour on speedboats, “attacked” a frigate, clambered up its cable ladders while shooting 9-mm MP5s loaded with paintball rounds. In one exercise we scurried down a flight of metal stairs into the frigate’s hold. Someone cut the lights, to make it more interesting, I suppose. In the pitch-dark, four steps from the bottom, I fell, landed on my left knee, which was immediately impaled on a fixed bolt sticking out of the floor.

Blinding pain washed over me.

I managed to get up, keep going, finish the drill. But at the end of the exercise we jumped off the boat’s helipad, into the water, and I found my knee wasn’t working. My whole leg wasn’t working. When I got out of the water and stripped off the dry suit, Willy looked down and turned pale.

My knee was gushing blood.

Paramedics were there within minutes.

The Palace announced some weeks later that my entry into the Army would be postponed. Indefinitely.

Reporters demanded to know why.

The Palace comms team told them: Prince Harry has injured his knee playing rugby.

Reading the papers, my leg iced and elevated, I threw back my head and laughed. I couldn’t help savoring one small particle of self-indulgent glee as the papers, for once, unwittingly printed a lie about me.

They soon got their revenge, however. They began pushing a story that I was afraid to go into the Army, that I was bunking off, using a fake knee injury as a way of stalling.

I was, they said, a coward.

50.

One of Willy’s friends was having a birthday party. In the countryside near Gloucestershire. More than a birthday party, it was a fancy-dress party, with a cringy theme. Natives and colonials. Guests were required to dress accordingly.

January 2005.

I didn’t love fancy-dress parties. And I couldn’t stand themes. For Willy’s last birthday, or the one before, he’d had a fancy-dress party with a theme: Out of Africa. I found it irritating and baffling. Every time I’d gone to Africa I’d worn shorts and a T-shirt, maybe a kikoi. Would that do, Willy? But this was magnitudes worse.