Spare (15 page)

In this same spirit of service, I agreed one day to perform a task that might otherwise have been unthinkable—an interview. If I truly wanted to shine a light on conditions here, I had no choice: I’d have to cooperate with the dreaded press.

But this was more than cooperating. This would be my first-ever solo session with a reporter.

We met on a grassy hillside, early one morning. He started by asking: Why this place? Of all places?

I said that children in Lesotho were in trouble, and I loved children, understood children, so naturally I wanted to help.

He pressed. Why did I love children?

I gave my best guess: My incredible immaturity?

I was being glib, but the reporter chuckled and moved on to his next question. The subject of children had opened the door to the subject of my childhood, and that was the gateway to the only subject he, or anyone, really wanted to ask me about.

Do you think about…her…a lot through something like this?

I looked off, down the hillside, responded with a series of disjointed words:
Unfortunately it’s been a long time now, um, not for me but for most people, it’s
been a long time since she’s died, but the stuff that’s come out has been bad, all the stuff that’s come out, all these tapes…

I was referring to recordings my mother had made before her death, a kind of quasi-confessional, which had just been leaked to the press, to coincide with release of the butler’s memoir. Seven years after being hounded into hiding my mother was still being hounded, and libeled—it didn’t make sense. In 1997 there’d been a nationwide reckoning, a period of collective remorse and reflection among all Britons. Everyone had agreed that the press was a pack of monsters, but consumers accepted blame as well. We all needed to do better, most people said. Now, many years later, all was forgotten. History was repeating itself daily, and I told the reporter it was “a shame.”

Not a momentous declaration. But it represented the first time that either Willy or I had ever spoken publicly about Mummy. I was amazed to be the one going first. Willy always went first, in all things, and I wondered how this would go over—with him, with the world, but especially with Pa. (Not well, Marko told me later. Pa was dead-set against me addressing that topic; he didn’t want either of his sons speaking about Mummy, for fear it would cause a stir, distract from his work, and perhaps shine an unflattering light on Camilla.)

Finally, with a completely false air of bravado, I shrugged and said to the reporter:
Bad news sells. Simple as that.

Speaking of bad news…the reporter now referenced my most recent scandal.

The page-three girl, of course.

He mentioned that
some were wondering
if I’d really learned anything from my visit to the rehab clinic. Had I truly “converted”? I don’t remember if he used that word,
converted,
but at least one paper had.

Did Harry need to be converted?

Harry the Heretic?

I could barely make out the reporter through the sudden red mist. How are we even talking about this? I blurted something about not being normal, which caused the reporter’s mouth to fall open.
Here we go.
He was getting his headline, his news fix. Were his eyes rolling up into his head?

And
I
was supposed to be the addict?

I explained what I meant by normal. I didn’t lead a normal life, because I couldn’t lead one.
Even my father reminds me that unfortunately Willy and I can’t be normal.
I told the reporter that no one but Willy understood what it was like to live in this surreal fishbowl, in which normal events were treated as abnormal, and the abnormal was routinely normalized.

That was what I was trying to say, starting to say, but then I took another look down the hillside. Poverty, disease, orphans—death. It rendered everything else rubbish. In Lesotho, no matter what you were going through, you were well-off compared to others. I suddenly felt ashamed, and wondered if the journalist had sense enough to be ashamed too. Sitting here above all this misery and talking about page-three girls? Come on.

After the interview I went and found George and we drank beer. A lot of beer. Gallons of beer.

I believe that was also the night I smoked an entire shopping bag of weed.

I don’t recommend it.

Then again, it might have been another night. Hard to be precise when it comes to a shopping bag full of weed.

George and I flew
from Lesotho to Cape Town, to meet up with some mates, and Marko.

March 2004.

We were staying at the home of the consulate general, and one night we talked about having some people over. For dinner. Just one small problem. We didn’t know anyone in Cape Town.

But wait—that wasn’t completely true. I’d met someone years earlier, a girl from South Africa. At the Berkshire Polo Club.

Chelsy.

I remembered her being…

Different.

I went through my phone, found her number.

Give her a call, Marko said.

Really?

Why not?

To my shock, the number worked. And she answered.

Stammering, I reminded her who I was, said I was in her town, wondered if she might like to come over…

She sounded unsure. She sounded as if she didn’t believe it was me. Flustered, I handed the phone to Marko, who promised that it was really me, and that the invitation was sincere, and that the evening would be very low-key—nothing to worry about. Pain-free. Maybe even fun.

She asked if she could bring her girlfriend. And her brother.

Of course! The more the merrier.

Hours later, there she was, sailing through the door. Turned out, my memory hadn’t lied. She was…
different.
That was the word that had come to mind when I first met her, and it immediately came to mind now, and then again and again during the barbecue. Different.

Unlike so many people I knew, she seemed wholly unconcerned with appearances, with propriety, with royalty. Unlike so many girls I met, she wasn’t visibly fitting herself for a crown the moment she shook my hand. She seemed immune to that common affliction sometimes called
throne syndrome
. It was similar to the effect that actors and musicians have on people, except with actors and musicians the root cause is talent. I had no talent—so I’d been told, again and again—and thus all reactions to me had nothing to do with me. They were down to my family, my title, and consequently they always embarrassed me, because they were so unearned. I’d always wanted to know what it might be like to meet a woman and not have her eyes widen at the mention of my title, but instead to widen them myself, using my mind, my heart. With Chelsy that seemed a real possibility. Not only was she uninterested in my title, she seemed bored by it.
Oh, you’re a prince? Yawn.

She knew nothing about my biography, less than nothing about my family. Granny, Willy, Pa—who’re they? Better yet, she was remarkably incurious. She probably didn’t even know about my mother; she was likely too young to recall the tragic events of August 1997. I couldn’t be sure this was true, of course, because to Chelsy’s credit we didn’t talk about it. Instead we talked about the main thing we had in common—Africa. Chelsy, born and raised in Zimbabwe, now living in Cape Town, loved Africa with all her soul. Her father owned a big game farm, and that was the fulcrum of her world. Though she’d enjoyed her years at a British boarding school, Stowe, she’d always hurried home for the holidays. I told her I understood. I told her about my life-changing experiences in Africa, my first formative trips. I told her about the strange visitation from the leopard. She nodded. She got it.
Brilliant. Africa does offer moments like that
,
if you’re ready. If you’re worthy.

At some point in the evening I told her I’d soon be entering the Army. I couldn’t gauge her reaction. Maybe she had none? At least it didn’t seem a deal-breaker.

Then I told her that George and Marko and I were all heading off the next day to Botswana. We were going to meet up with Adi, some others, float upriver.
Come with us?

She smiled shyly, gave it a moment’s thought. She and her girlfriend had other plans…

Oh. Too bad.

But they’d cancel them, she said. They’d love to come with us.

We spent three days
walking, laughing, drinking, mingling with the animals. Not just wild animals. By chance we met up with a snake wrangler, who showed us his cobra, his rattlesnake. He manipulated the snakes up and down his shoulders, his arms, giving us a private show.

Later that night, Chelsy and I had our first kiss under the stars.

George, meanwhile, fell head over heels in love with her girlfriend.

When the time came for Chelsy and her girlfriend to go home, and George to go back to Australia, and Marko to go back to London, there were sad goodbyes all around.

Suddenly I found myself alone in the bush, with just Adi.

What now?

We heard about a camp nearby. Two filmmakers were doing a wildlife documentary and we were invited to go round and meet them.

We jumped into a Land Cruiser and soon found ourselves in the middle of a raucous bush party. Men and women drinking, dancing, all wearing bizarre animal masks made from cardboard and pipe cleaners. An Okavango Carnival.

The leaders of this mayhem were a couple in their thirties: Teej and Mike. They were the filmmakers, I gathered. In fact, they owned a whole film company, plus this camp. I introduced myself, complimented them on their ability to throw a truly epic bash. They laughed and said they were going to pay for it tomorrow.

Both had to get up early for work.

I asked if I could tag along. I’d love to see how the filmmaking was done.

They looked at me, then at each other. They knew who I was, and while it was surprising enough to meet me in the bush, the idea of hiring me as a helper was a lot to take in.

Mike said:
Course you can come. But you’ll have to work. Lift heavy boxes, lug cameras around.

I could see from their faces that they expected that to be the end of it.

I smiled and said:
Sounds great.

They were shocked. And pleased.

It felt something like love at first sight. On both sides.

Teej and Mike were Africans. She was from Cape Town; he was from Nairobi. She’d been born in Italy, however, spent her first years in Milan, and took special pride in her Milanese roots, the source of her soulfulness, she said, which was as close to a boast as you’d ever hear from Teej. She’d even grown up speaking Italian, though she’d forgotten it, she said sadly. Except she hadn’t. Any time she went into a hospital she shocked everyone by coming out of the anesthetic speaking fluent Italian.

Mike had grown up on a farm, learned to ride horses not long after he’d learned to walk. By chance his next-door neighbor was one of the first-ever wildlife filmmakers. Every time Mike got a free minute he’d run next door and sit with this neighbor, barrage him with questions. Mike had found his one true calling and the neighbor recognized it, fostered it.

Both Teej and Mike were talented, brilliant, and wholly devoted to wildlife. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with these two, not just on this trip but in general. The problem was, would they let me?

I’d often catch Teej looking in my direction, sizing me up, a curious smile on her face—as though I were something wild that had unexpectedly wandered into their camp. But instead of shooing me, or using me, as many would’ve done, she reached out and…petted me. Decades of observing wildlife had given her a feel for wildness, a reverence for it as a virtue and even a basic right. She and Mike were the first people ever to cherish whatever wildness was still inside me, whatever hadn’t been lost to grief—and paps. They were outraged that others wanted to eliminate this last bit, that others were keen to put me into a cage.

On that trip, or perhaps the next, I asked Teej and Mike how they’d met. They smiled guiltily.

Mutual friend, Mike mumbled.

Blind date, Teej whispered.

The setting was a small restaurant. When Mike walked in, Teej was already at the table, her back to the door. She couldn’t see Mike, she could only hear his voice, but even before turning around she knew, from the tone, the timbre, the change in room temperature, that she was in big trouble.

They got on beautifully over dinner, and the next day Teej went to Mike’s place for coffee. She nearly fainted when she walked in. On the top shelf of his bookcase was a book by her grandfather, Robert Ardrey, a legendary
scientist, essayist, writer. (He’d won an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of
Khartoum
.) In addition to her grandfather’s books, Mike had all Teej’s other favorites
arranged in the same order as they were arranged on her own shelves
. She put a hand to her mouth. This was synchronicity. This was a sign. She never went back to her apartment, except to pack her stuff. She and Mike had been together ever since.

They told me this story around the campfire. With Marko and that lot, the campfire was central, but with Teej and Mike it was sacrosanct. The same drinks went round, the same riveting stories, but it felt more ritualistic. There are few places where I’ve felt closer to truth, or more alive.

Teej saw it. She could tell how at home I felt with them. She said:
I think your body was born in Britain, but your soul was born here in Africa.

Possibly the highest compliment I’d ever received.

After a few days of walking with them, eating with them, falling in love with them, I felt an overwhelming peace.

And an equally overwhelming need to see Chelsy again.

What to do? I wondered. How to make it happen? How to get into Cape Town without the press seeing and ruining it?

Adi said: Let’s drive!

Drive? Huh. Yes. Brilliant!

It was only two days, after all.

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.