Spare

I was overjoyed. So was Willy. More, it was glorious to finally have our suspicions validated and our circle of closest friends vindicated, to know that we hadn’t been stark, staring paranoid. Things really had been amiss. We’d been betrayed, as we’d always suspected, but not by bodyguards or best mates. It was those Fleet Street weasels yet again. And the Metropolitan Police, who’d inexplicably failed to do their jobs, refusing time and again to investigate and arrest obvious lawbreakers.

The question was why? Pay-offs? Collusion? Fear?

We’d soon find out.

The public was horrified. If journalists could use the mighty powers vested in them for evil, then democracy was in sorry shape. More, if journalists were allowed to probe and foil the security measures that notable figures and government officials required to stay safe, then they’d ultimately show terrorists how to do it too. And then it would be a free-for-all. No one would be safe.

For generations Britons had said with a wry laugh: Ah, well, of course our newspapers are shit—but what can you do? Now they weren’t laughing. And there was general agreement: We need to do something.

There were even death rattles coming from the most popular Sunday newspaper, Murdoch’s News of the World. The leading culprit in the hacking scandal, its very survival was in doubt. Advertisers were talking about fleeing, readers were talking about boycotts. Was it possible? Murdoch’s baby—his grotesque two-headed circus baby—might finally expire?

A new era was at hand?

Strange. While all this put Willy and me in a chipper mood, we didn’t talk much about it explicitly. We had loads of laughs in that cottage, passed many happy hours talking about all kinds of things, but seldom that. I wonder if it was just too painful. Or maybe still too unresolved. Maybe we didn’t want to jinx it, didn’t dare pop the cork on the champagne until we saw photos of Rehabber Kooks and the Thumb sharing a cell.

Or maybe there was some tension under the surface between us, which I wasn’t fully comprehending. While sharing that cottage we agreed to a rare joint interview, in an airplane hangar at Shawbury, during which Willy griped endlessly about my habits. Harry’s a slob, he said. Harry snores.

I turned and gave him a look. Was he joking?

I cleaned up after myself, and I didn’t snore. Besides, our rooms were separated by thick walls, so even if I did snore there was no way he heard. The reporters were having fits of giggles about it all, but I cut in: Lies! Lies!

That only made them laugh harder. Willy too.

I laughed as well, because we often bantered like that, but when I look back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something else at play. I was training to get to the front lines, the same place Willy had been training to get, but the Palace had scuttled his plans. The Spare, sure, let him run around a battlefield like a chicken with its head cut off, if that’s what he likes.

But the Heir? No.

So Willy was now training to be a search and rescue pilot, and perhaps feeling quietly frustrated about it. In which case, he was seeing it all wrong. He was doing remarkable, vital work, I thought, saving lives every week. I was proud of him, and full of respect for the way he was dedicating himself wholeheartedly to his preparation.

Still, I should’ve figured out how he might have been feeling. I knew all too well the despair of being pulled from a fight for which you’ve spent years preparing.

32.

From Shawbury I moved on to Middle Wallop. I now knew how to fly a helicopter, the Army conceded, but next I needed to learn how to fly one tactically. While doing other things. Many other things. Like reading a map and locating a target and firing missiles and talking on the radios and peeing into a bag. Multitasking in the air at 140 knots—not for everyone. To accomplish this Jedi mind trick, my brain would first need to be reshaped, my synapses rewired, and my Yoda in this massive neuro-reengineering would be Nigel.

A.k.a. Nige.

It was he who drew the unenviable task of becoming my fourth, and arguably most important, flight instructor.

The aircraft on which we’d be conducting our sessions was the Squirrel. That was the colloquial name for the little French-made single-engine helicopter on which most British students trained. But Nige was less focused on the actual Squirrel in which we sat than the squirrels inside my head. Head squirrels were the ancient enemies of human concentration, Nige assured me. Without my being aware of it they’d taken up residence in my consciousness. More devious than the hover monkeys, he said, they were also far more dangerous.

The only way to get rid of head squirrels, Nige insisted, was iron discipline. A helicopter is easily mastered, but the head takes more time and more patience.

Time and patience, I thought impatiently. I don’t have much of either, Nige, so let’s crack on…