Spare (32 page)

But when you’re back…

When. She’d said
when.
Not
if.

I was grateful.

Some people said if.

My mates came to
me and reminded me of the Plan.

The Plan?

You know, Spike. The Plan?

Oh, right? The Plan.

We’d talked about this before, months earlier. But now I wasn’t sure.

They gave me the hard sell.
You’re going to war. Staring death in the face.

Right, thanks.

You have a duty to live. Now. Seize the day.

Seize the—?

Carpe diem
.

OK…what?

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

Ah, so it’s two ways of saying the same thing then—

Vegas, Spike! Remember? The Plan.

Yes, yes, The Plan, but…seems risky.

Seize the—!

Day. Got it.

I’d had an experience, recently, that made me think they weren’t altogether wrong, that
carpe diem
was more than empty words. Playing polo that spring in Brazil, to raise money for Sentebale, I’d seen a player take a hard fall from his horse. As a boy, I’d seen Pa take that same fall, the horse giving way, the ground simultaneously smacking and swallowing him. I remembered thinking: Why’s Pa snoring? And then someone yelling:
He’s swallowed his tongue!
A quick-thinking player jumped from his horse and saved Pa’s life. Recalling that moment, subconsciously, I’d done likewise: jumped off my horse, run to the man, pulled out his tongue.

The man coughed, began to breathe again.

I’m fairly sure he wrote a sizable check later that afternoon to Sentebale.

But equally valuable was the lesson. Carpe your diems while ye may.

So I told my mates:
OK. Vegas. Let’s go
.

A year before, after exercises in Gila Bend, my mates and I had rented
Harleys, ridden from Phoenix to Vegas. Most of the trip went unnoticed. So now, after a farewell weekend with Cressida, I flew to Nevada to do it again.

We even went to the same hotel, and all chipped in on the same suite.

It had two levels, connected by a grand staircase of white marble, which looked as if Elvis and Wayne Newton were about to descend arm in arm. You didn’t need to take the stairs, however, since the suite also had a lift. And a billiard table.

The best part was the living room: six massive windows looking onto the Strip, and arranged before the windows was a low L-shaped sofa where you could gaze at the Strip, or the distant mountains, or the massive wall-mounted plasma TV. Such opulence. I’d been inside a few palaces in my time, and this was palatial.

That first night, or the next—it’s a bit of a neon blur—someone ordered food, someone else ordered cocktails, and we all sat around and had a loud chat, catching up. What happened to everyone since we’d last been in Vegas?

So, Lieutenant Wales, raring to go back to war?

I am
,
I really am.

Everyone looked taken aback.

For dinner we hit a steakhouse, and ate like kings. New York strips, three kinds of pasta, really nice red wine. Afterwards, we went to a casino, played blackjack and roulette, lost. Tired, I excused myself, went back to the suite.

Yes, I thought with a sigh, sliding under the covers, I’m that guy, turning in early, telling everyone to please keep it down.

The next morning we ordered breakfast, Bloody Marys. We all headed off to the pool. It was pool-party season in Vegas, so a big blowout was raging. We bought fifty beach balls and handed them out, as a way of breaking the ice.

We really were that nerdy. And needy.

That is, my mates were. I wasn’t looking to make new friends. I had a girlfriend, and I aimed to keep it that way. I texted her several times from the pool, to reassure her.

But people kept handing me drinks. And by the time the sun was dipping over the mountains I was in rough shape, and filling up with…ideas.

I need something to commemorate this trip, I decided. Something to symbolize my sense of freedom, my sense of carpe diem.

For instance…a tattoo?

Yes! Just the thing!

Maybe on my shoulder?

No, too visible.

Lower back?

No, too…racy.

Maybe my foot?

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.

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.

Best of all, none of my bodyguards were dismissed or even disciplined—mainly because I kept it a secret that they’d been with me at the time.

But the British papers, even knowing I was off to war, continued to vent and fume as if I’d committed a capital offense.

It was a good time to leave.

September 2012. The same eternal flight, but this time I wasn’t a stowaway. This time there was no hidden alcove, no secret bunkbeds. This time I was allowed to sit with all the other soldiers, to feel part of a team.

As we touched down at Camp Bastion, however, I realized I wasn’t quite one of the lads. Some looked nervous, their collars tighter, their Adam’s apples larger. I remembered that feeling, but for me this was coming home. After more than four years, and against all odds, I was finally back. As a Captain. (I’d been promoted since my first tour.)

My accommodation this time was better. In fact, compared to my last tour, it was Vegas-esque. Pilots were treated like—the word was unavoidable, everybody used it—royalty. Soft beds, clean rooms. More, the rooms were actual rooms, not trenches or tents. Each even had its own air-con unit.

We were given a week to learn our way around Bastion, and to recover from jet lag. Other Bastionites were helpful, more than happy to show us the ropes.

Captain Wales, this is where the latrines are!

Captain Wales, over here is where you’ll find hot pizza!

It felt a bit like a field trip, until, on the eve of my twenty-eighth birthday, I was sitting in my room, organizing my stuff, and sirens started going off. I opened my door, peered out. All down the hall other doors were flying open, other heads popping out.

Now both my bodyguards came running. (Unlike the last tour of duty, I had bodyguards this time, mainly because there was proper accommodation for them, and because they could blend in: I was living with thousands of others.) One said:
We’re under attack!

We heard explosions in the distance, near the aircraft hangars. I started to run for my Apache but my bodyguards stopped me.

Way too dangerous.

We heard shouting outside.
Make ready!
MAKE READY!

We all got into body armor and stood in the doorway to await the next instructions. As I double-checked my vest and helmet one bodyguard kept up a constant patter:
I knew this was going to happen, I just knew it, I told everyone, but no one would listen. Shut up, they said, but I told them, I told them, Harry’s going to get hurt! Fuck off, they said, and now here we are.

He was a Scot, with a thick burr, and often sounded like Sean Connery, which was charming under normal circumstances, but now he just sounded like Sean Connery having a panic attack. I cut off his long story about being an unappreciated Cassandra and told him to put a sock in it.

I felt naked. I had my 9-mm, but my SA80A was locked up. I had my bodyguards, but I needed my Apache. That was the only place I’d feel safe—and useful. I needed to rain fire down on our attackers, whoever they were.

More explosions, louder explosions. The windows flickered. Now we saw flames. American Cobras came thumping overhead and the whole building shuddered. The Cobras fired. The Apaches fired. An awesome roar filled the room. We all felt dread, and adrenaline. But we Apache pilots were especially agitated, itching to get into our cockpits.

Someone reminded me that Bastion was about the size of Reading. How could we ever navigate our way from here to the helicopters without a map, while taking fire?

That was when we heard the all-clear.

The sirens stopped. The thump of rotors faded.

Bastion was secure again.

But at a terrible price, we learned. Two American soldiers were killed. Seventeen British and American soldiers were injured.

Throughout that day and the next we pieced together what happened. Taliban fighters had got hold of American uniforms, cut a hole in the fence, and slipped in.

They cut a hole in the fence?

Yep.

Why?

In short, me.

They were looking for Prince Harry, they said.

The Taliban actually issued a statement: Prince Harry was our target. And the date of the attack had been carefully chosen as well.

They’d timed it, they proclaimed, to coincide with my birthday.

I didn’t know if I believed that.

I didn’t want to believe it.

But one thing was beyond dispute. The Taliban had learned about my presence on the base, and the granular details of my tour, through the nonstop coverage that week in the British press.

There was some talk,
after the attack, about pulling me off the battlefield. Again.

I couldn’t bear to think about that. It was too awful to contemplate.