Spare (28 page)

We were staying in a tent in her garden. She sat with us in the tent, delivering these difficult truths while holding hands with each of us. Looking us in the eyes, she urged us to let this breakup be final.

Don’t waste the most precious thing there is. Time.

She was right, I knew. As Sergeant Major Booley said: It’s time.

So I forced myself to put the relationship out of my mind—in fact, all relationships. Stay busy, I told myself as I flew away from Botswana. In the short while left before you ship to Afghanistan, just stay busy.

To that end, I went to Lesotho with Willy. We visited several schools built by Sentebale. Prince Seeiso was with us; he’d co-founded the charity with me back in 2006, shortly after losing his own mother. (His mother had also been a fighter in the war against HIV.) He took us to meet scores of children, each with a wrenching story. The average life expectancy in Lesotho at that time was forty-something, while in Britain it was seventy-nine for men, eighty-two for women. Being a child in Lesotho was like being middle-aged in Manchester, and while there were various complicated reasons for this, the main one was HIV.

A quarter of all Lesotho adults were HIV-positive.

After two or three days we set off with Prince Seeiso towards more remote schools, off the grid. Way off. As a gift Prince Seeiso gave us wild ponies, to ride part of the way, and tribal blankets for the cold. We wore them as capes.

Our first stop was a frozen village in the clouds: Semonkong. Some seven
thousand feet above sea level, it lay between snow-tipped mountains. Plumes of warm air spurted from the horses’ noses as we pushed them up, up, but when the climb got too steep, we switched to trucks.

Upon arriving we went straight into the school. Shepherd boys would come here twice a week, have a hot meal, go to a class. We sat in semi-darkness, beside a paraffin lamp, watching a lesson, and then we sat on the ground with a dozen boys, some as young as eight. We listened to them describe their daily trek to our school. It defied belief: after twelve hours of tending their cattle and sheep, they’d walk for two hours through mountain passes just to learn maths, reading, writing. Such was their hunger to learn. They braved sore feet, bitter cold—and far worse. They were so vulnerable on the road, so exposed to the elements, several had died from lightning strikes. Many had been attacked by stray dogs. They dropped their voices and told us that many had also been sexually abused by wanderers, rustlers, nomads, and other boys.

I felt ashamed to think of all my bitching about school. About anything.

Despite what they’d suffered, the boys were still boys. Their joy was irrepressible. They thrilled at the gifts we’d brought—warm coats, wool beanies. They put on the clothes, danced, sang. We joined them.

One boy kept to the side. His face was round, open, transparent. There was obviously a terrible burden on his heart. I felt it would be prying to ask. But I had one more gift in my bag, a torch, and I gave it to him.

I said I hoped it would light his way each day to school.

He smiled.

I wanted to tell him that his smile would light mine. I tried.

Alas, my Sesotho wasn’t very good.

Soon after we returned
to Britain the Palace announced that Willy was going to marry.

November 2010.

News to me. All that time together in Lesotho, he’d never mentioned it.

The papers published florid stories about the moment I realized Willy and Kate were well matched, the moment I appreciated the depth of their love and thus decided to gift Willy the ring I’d inherited from Mummy, the
legendary sapphire, a tender moment between brothers, a bonding moment for all three of us, and absolute rubbish: none of it ever happened. I never gave Willy that ring because it wasn’t mine to give. He already had it. He’d asked for it after Mummy died, and I’d been more than happy to let it go.

Now, as Willy focused on wedding preparations, I wished him well and turned sharply inward. I thought long and hard about my singlehood. I’d always assumed I’d be the first to be married, because I’d wanted it so badly. I’d always assumed that I’d be a young husband, a young father, because I’d resolved not to become my father. He’d been an older dad, and I’d always felt that this created problems, placed barriers between us. In his middle years he’d become more sedentary, more habitual. He liked his routines. He wasn’t the kind of father who played endless rounds of tag, or tossed a ball until long after dark. He’d been so once. He’d chased us all over Sandringham, making up wonderful games, like the one where he wrapped us in blankets, like hot dogs, until we screamed with helpless laughter, and then yanked the blanket and shot us out of the other end. I don’t know if Willy or I have ever laughed harder. But, long before we were ready, he stopped engaging in that kind of physical fun. He just didn’t have the enthusiasm—the puff.

But I would, I always promised myself. I would.

Now I wondered: Will I?

Was that the real me who made that promise to become a young father? Or was this the real me, struggling to find the right person, the right partner, while also struggling to work out who I was?

Why is this thing, which I supposedly want so badly, not happening?

And what if it never happens? What will my life mean? What will my ultimate purpose be?

War, I reckoned. When all else failed, as it usually did, I still had soldiering. (If only I had a deployment date.)

And after the wars, I thought, there will always be charitable work. Since the Lesotho trip, I’d felt more passionate than ever about continuing Mummy’s causes. And I was determined to take up the cause Mike gave me at his kitchen table. That’s enough for a full life, I told myself.

It seemed like serendipity, therefore, like a synthesis of all my thinking, when I heard from a group of wounded soldiers planning a trek to the North Pole. They were hoping to raise millions for Walking With The Wounded, and also to become the first amputees ever to reach the Pole unsupported. They invited me to join them.

I wanted to say yes. I was dying to say yes. Just one problem. The trek was in early April, dangerously close to Willy’s announced wedding date. I’d have to get there and back with no hitches, or risk missing the ceremony.

But the North Pole wasn’t a place you could ever be sure of getting to and from without hitches. The North Pole was a place of infinite hitches. There were always variables, usually related to weather. So I was nervous at the prospect, and the Palace was doubly nervous.

I asked JLP for his advice.

He smiled.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
.

Yes. It is.

You’ve got to go.

But first, he said, there was one other place I needed to go.

In a direct continuation of conversations he and I had begun five years earlier, after my Nazi debacle, he’d organized a trip to Berlin.

And so. December 2010. A bitterly cold day. I put my fingertips to the bullet holes in the city’s walls, the still-fresh scars from Hitler’s insane vow to fight to the last man. I stood at the former site of the Berlin Wall, which had also been the site of SS torture chambers, and swore I could hear the echoes of agonized screams on the wind. I met a woman who’d been sent to Auschwitz. She described her confinement, the horrors she saw, heard, smelt. Her stories were as difficult to hear as they were vital. But I won’t retell them. They’re not mine to retell.

I’d long understood that the photo of me in a Nazi uniform had been the result of various failures—failure of thinking, failure of character. But it had also been a failure of education. Not just school education, but self-education. I hadn’t known enough about the Nazis, hadn’t taught myself enough, hadn’t asked enough questions of teachers and families and survivors.

I’d resolved to change that.

I couldn’t become the person I hoped to be until I changed that.

My plane landed
on an archipelago called Svalbard. March 2011.

Stepping off the plane I did a slow turn, taking it all in. White, white, and more white. As far as the eye could see, nothing but ivory, snowy whiteness. White mountains, white snowdrifts, white hills, and threaded through it were narrow white roads, and not many of those. Most of the two
thousand local residents had a snowmobile, not a car. The landscape was so minimalist, so spare, I thought: Maybe I’ll move here.

Maybe
this
is my purpose.

Then I found out about the local law forbidding anyone to leave town
without
a gun, because the hills beyond were patrolled by desperately hungry polar bears, and I thought: Maybe not.

We drove into a town called Longyearbyen, the northernmost town on earth, a mere eight hundred miles from the apex of the planet. I met my fellow trekkers. Captain Guy Disney, a cavalryman who’d lost the lower part of his right leg to an RPG. Captain Martin Hewitt, a paratrooper whose arm became paralyzed after he’d been shot. Private Jaco Van Gass, another paratrooper, who’d lost much of his left leg and half his left arm to an RPG. (He gave the remaining nib of his arm a jaunty nickname, Nemo, which always cracked us up.) Sergeant Steve Young, a Welshman, whose back had been broken by an IED. Doctors said he’d never walk again, and now he was about to tug a 200-pound sledge to the North Pole.

Inspiring lot. I told them I was honored to join them, honored just to be in their company, and it didn’t matter that the temperature was thirty below. In fact, the weather was so bad we were delayed in setting off.

Ugh, Willy’s wedding, I thought, my face in my hands.

We spent several days waiting, training, eating pizza and chips at the local pub. We did some exercises to acclimatize to the harsh temperatures. We pulled on orange immersion suits, jumped into the Arctic Ocean. Shocking how much warmer the water was than the brutally cold air.

But mostly we got to know each other, bonded.

When the weather finally cleared we hopped onto an Antonov and flew up to a makeshift ice camp, then switched to helicopters and flew to within two hundred miles of the Pole. It was about one
a.m.
when we landed, but bright as midday in a desert. There was no darkness up there: darkness had been banished. We waved goodbye to the helicopters and began.

Experts on Arctic conditions had urged the team to avoid sweating, because any moisture freezes instantly at the North Pole, which causes all kinds of problems. But no one told me. I’d missed those training sessions with the experts. So there I was, after the first day’s walk, after the pulling of heavy sledges, absolutely gushing perspiration, and sure enough my clothes were turning to solid ice. More alarming, I was beginning to notice the first spots of trouble on my fingers and ears.

Frostnip.

I didn’t complain. How could I, among that bunch? But I also didn’t feel like complaining. Despite the discomfort, I felt only gratitude at being with such heroes, at serving such a worthy cause, at seeing a place so few people ever get to see. In fact, on Day Four, when it came time to leave, I didn’t want to. Also, we hadn’t yet reached the Pole.

Alas, I had no choice. It was leave now or miss my brother’s wedding.

I got onto a helicopter, bound for Barneo Airfield, from which my plane was to take off.

The pilot hesitated. He insisted that I needed to see the Pole before leaving.
You can’t come all this way and not see it,
he said. So he flew me there and we hopped out into total whiteout. Together, we located the exact spot with GPS.

Standing on top of the world.

Alone.

Holding the Union Jack.

Back on the helicopter, off to Barneo. But just then, a powerful storm came sweeping across the top of the earth, canceling my flight, canceling all flights. Hurricane winds battered the area, growing so intense that they cracked the runway.

Repairs would be required.

While waiting, I hung out with an assortment of engineers. We drank vodka, sat in their makeshift sauna, then jumped into the ice-cold ocean. Many times I tipped back my head, downed another shot of delicious vodka, told myself not to stress about the runway, the wedding, anything.

The storm passed, the runway got rebuilt, or moved, I forget which. My plane went roaring down the ice and lifted me into the blue sky. I waved out the window. Goodbye, my brothers.

On the eve of the
wedding Willy and I had dinner at Clarence House with Pa. Also present were James and Thomas—Willy’s best men.

The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie. The public expected me to be best man, and thus the Palace saw no choice but to say that I was. In truth, Willy didn’t want me giving a best-man speech. He didn’t think it safe to hand me a live mic and put me in a position to go off script. I might say something wildly inappropriate.

He wasn’t wrong.

Also, the lie gave cover to James and Thomas, two civilians, two innocents. Had they been outed as Willy’s best men, the rabid press would’ve chased them, tracked them, hacked them, investigated them, ruined their families’ lives. Both chaps were shy, quiet. They couldn’t handle such an onslaught, and shouldn’t be expected to.

Willy explained all this to me and I didn’t blink. I understood. We even had a laugh about it, speculating about the inappropriate things I might’ve said in my speech. And so the pre-wedding dinner was pleasant, jolly, despite Willy visibly suffering from standard groom jitters. Thomas and James forced him to down a couple of rum and Cokes, which did seem to settle his nerves. Meanwhile I regaled the company with tales of the North Pole. Pa was very interested, and sympathetic about the discomfort of my frostnipped ears and cheeks, and it was an effort not to overshare and tell him also about my equally tender penis. Upon arriving home I’d been horrified to discover that my nether regions were frostnipped as well, and while the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn’t.

It was becoming more of an issue by the day.