Spare

We jumped into a car, drove without stopping, drinking whisky and gobbling chocolate for energy. I arrived at Chelsy’s front door barefoot, scruffy, crowned with a filthy beanie, a huge smile creasing my dirty face.

She gasped…then laughed.

Then…opened the door a bit wider.

47.

Chels and I learned an important lesson. Africa was Africa…but Britain was always Britain.

Soon after we arrived back at Heathrow we were papped.

Never fun for me, but not a shock either. There’d been a few years, after Mummy disappeared, when I’d hardly ever been papped, but now it was constant. I advised Chelsy to treat it like a chronic illness, something to be managed.

But she wasn’t sure she wanted to have a chronic illness.

I told her I understood. Perfectly valid feeling. But this was my life, and if she wanted to share any part of it, she’d have to share this too.

You get used to it, I lied.

Thereafter, I put the chances at fifty-fifty, maybe sixty-forty, I’d ever see Chels again. Odds were, the press would cost me another person I cared about. I tried to reassure myself that it was fine, that I didn’t really have time for a relationship just then.

I had work to do.

For starters, I was facing the entrance exams required for the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

They took four days, and they were nothing like exams at Eton. There was some bookwork, some written stuff, but mostly they were tests for psychological toughness and leadership skills.

Turned out…I had both. I passed with flying colors.

I was delighted. My trouble concentrating, my trauma over my mother, none of that came into play. None of that counted against me with the British Army. On the contrary, I discovered, those things made me all the more ideal. The Army was looking for lads like me.

What’s that you say, young man? Parents divorced? Mum’s dead? Unresolved grief or psychological trauma? Step this way!

Along with news that I’d passed I received a report date, several months away. Which meant I’d have time to gather my thoughts, tie up loose ends. Even better, time to spend with Chels…if she’d have me?

She would. She invited me to come back to Cape Town, meet her parents.

I did. And liked them instantly. They were impossible not to like. They enjoyed funny stories, gin and tonics, good food, stalking. Her father was bear-sized, broad-shouldered, cuddly, but also a definite alpha. Her mother was petite, an amazing listener, and a frequent bestower of epic hugs. I didn’t know what the future held, I didn’t want to put any carts before any horses, but I thought: If you designed in-laws from the ground up, you couldn’t do much better than these guys.

48.

There must have been something in the air. Just as I was embarking on my new romance, Pa announced that he’d decided to marry. He’d asked Granny’s permission, and she’d granted it. Reluctantly, it was reported.

Despite Willy and me urging him not to, Pa was going ahead. We pumped his hand, wished him well. No hard feelings. We recognized that he was finally going to be with the woman he loved, the woman he’d always loved, the woman Fate might’ve intended for him in the first place. Whatever bitterness or sorrow we felt over the closing of another loop in Mummy’s story, we understood that it was beside the point.

Also, we sympathized with Pa and Camilla as a couple. They’d taken star-crossed to new levels. After years of thwarted longing, they were now just a few steps from happiness…and new obstacles kept appearing. First there was the controversy over the nature of the ceremony. Courtiers insisted it would have to be a civil ceremony, because Pa, as future supreme governor of the Church of England, couldn’t marry a divorcée in the church. That set off a furious debate about locations. If the civil ceremony were to be held at Windsor Castle, the couple’s first choice, then Windsor would first need to be licensed for civil weddings, and if that were to happen then everyone in Britain would be allowed to have their civil weddings there. No one wanted that.

The decision was therefore made that the wedding would take place at Windsor Guildhall.

But then the Pope died.

Bewildered, I asked Willy: What’s the Pope got to do with Pa?

Loads, it turned out. Pa and Camilla didn’t want to get married on the same day the Pope was being laid to rest. Bad karma. Less press. More to the point, Granny wanted Pa to represent her at the funeral.

The wedding plans were changed yet again.

Delay after delay—if you listened carefully you could hear, wafting across the Palace grounds, the shrieks and groans of despair. You just couldn’t tell whose they were: the wedding planner’s or Camilla’s (or Pa’s).

Other than feeling sorry for them, I couldn’t help but think that some force in the universe (Mummy?) was blocking rather than blessing their union. Maybe the universe delays what it disapproves of?