Spare

Yes. The sole of my foot! Where the skin had once peeled away. Layers upon layers of symbolism!

Now, what would the tattoo be?

I thought and thought. What’s important to me? What’s sacred?

Of course—Botswana.

I’d seen a tattoo parlor down the block. I hoped they’d have a good atlas, with a clear map of Botswana.

I went to find Billy the Rock to tell him where we were going. He smiled.

No way.

My mates backed him up. Absolutely not.

In fact, they promised to physically stop me. I was not going to get a tattoo, they said, not on their watch, least of all a foot tattoo of Botswana. They promised to hold me down, knock me out, whatever it took.

A tattoo is permanent, Spike! It’s forever!

Their arguments and threats are one of my last clear memories from that evening.

I gave in. The tattoo could wait till the next day.

Instead, we trooped off to a club, where I curled into the corner of a leather banquette and watched a procession of young women come and go, chatting up my mates. I talked to one or two, and encouraged them to focus on my mates. But mostly I stared into space and thought about being forced to forgo my tattoo dream.

Around two a.m. we went back to our suite. My mates invited four or five women who worked at the hotel to join us, along with two women they’d met at the blackjack tables. Soon someone suggested we play pool, and that did sound fun. I racked the balls, started playing eight-ball with my bodyguards.

Then I noticed the blackjack girls hovering. They looked dodgy. But when they asked if they could play I didn’t want to be rude. Everyone took turns, and no one was very good.

I suggested we up the stakes. How about a game of strip pool?

Enthusiastic cheers.

Ten minutes later I was the big loser, reduced to my skivvies. Then I lost my skivvies. It was harmless, silly, or so I thought. Until the next day. Standing outside the hotel in the blinding desert sun I turned and saw one of my mates staring at his phone, his mouth falling open. He told me: Spike, one of those blackjack girls secretly snapped a few photos…and sold them.

Spike…you’re everywhere, mate.

Specifically what was everywhere was my arse. I was naked before the eyes of the world…seizing my diem.

Billy the Rock, now studying his phone, kept saying: This isn’t good, H.

He knew this was going to be hard for me. But he also knew it wasn’t going to be any fun for himself and the other bodyguards. They could easily lose their jobs over this.

I berated myself: How had I let it happen? How had I been so stupid? Why had I trusted other people? I’d counted on strangers having goodwill, I’d counted on those dodgy girls showing some basic decency, and now I was going to pay the price forever. These photos would never go away. They were permanent. They’d make a foot tattoo of Botswana look like a splodge of Indian ink.

My sense of guilt and shame made it hard at moments to draw a clean breath. Meanwhile, the papers back home had already begun skinning me alive. The Return of Hooray Harry. Prince Thicko Strikes Again.

I thought of Cress reading the stories. I thought of my superiors in the Army.

Who would give me the heave-ho first?

While waiting to find out, I fled to Scotland, met up with my family at Balmoral. It was August and they were all there. Yes, I thought, yes, the one thing missing from this Kafkaesque nightmare is Balmoral, with all its complicated memories and the pending anniversary of Mummy’s death just days away.

Soon after my arrival I met Pa at nearby Birkhall. To my surprise, to my relief, he was gentle. Even bemused. He felt for me, he said, he’d been there, though he’d never been naked on a front page. Actually, that was untrue. When I was about eight years old a German newspaper had published naked photos of him, taken with a telephoto lens while he was holidaying in France.

But he and I had both put those photos out of our minds.

Certainly he’d felt naked many times before the world, and that was our common ground. We sat by a window and talked for quite a long time about this strange existence of ours, while watching Birkhall’s red squirrels frolic on the lawn.

Carpe diem, squirrels.

50.

My Army superiors, like Pa, were nonplussed. They didn’t care about me playing billiards in the privacy of a hotel room, naked or not. My status remained unchanged, they said. All systems go.

My fellow soldiers stood up for me too. Men and women in uniform, all around the world, posed naked, or nearly so, covering their privates with helmets, weapons, berets, and posted the photos online, in solidarity with Prince Harry.

As for Cress: After hearing my careful and abashed explanation, she came to the same conclusion. I’d been a dummy, not a debaucher.

I apologized for embarrassing her.