Spare (35 page)

What? I wondered.

Sadness?

Numbness?

I couldn’t name it. And without being able to give it a name, I felt a kind of vertigo.

What was happening to me?

The whole American tour lasted only five days—a true whirlwind. So many sights, and faces, and remarkable moments. But on the flight home I was thinking about only one part.

A stop-off in Colorado. Something called the Warrior Games. A kind of Olympiad for wounded soldiers, with two hundred men and women taking part, each of whom inspired me.

I watched them closely, saw them having the time of their lives, saw them competing to the hilt, and I asked them…how?

Sport, they said. The most direct route to healing.

Most were natural athletes, and they told me these games had given them a rare chance to rediscover and express their physical talents, despite their wounds. As a result it made their wounds, both mental and physical, disappear. Maybe only for a moment, or a day, but that was enough. More than enough. Once you’ve made a wound disappear for any length of time, it’s no longer in control—you are.

Yes, I thought. I get that.

And so, on the flight back to Britain, I kept going over those games in my mind, wondering if we could do something similar in Britain. A version of those Warrior Games, but perhaps with more soldiers, more visibility, more benefits to participants. I scribbled some notes on a sheet of paper and by the time my plane touched down I had the essential idea sketched out.

A Paralympics for soldiers from all over the world! In London’s Olympic Park! Where the London Olympics had just happened!

With full support and cooperation from the Palace. Maybe?

Big ask. But I felt that I’d accrued some political capital. Despite Vegas, despite at least one article that made me out to be some kind of war criminal, despite my whole checkered history as the naughty one, Britons seemed to
have a generally positive view of the Spare. There was a feeling that I was coming into my own. Plus, most Brits had a positive view of the military community overall, despite the unpopularity of the war. Surely they’d be supportive of an effort to help soldiers and their families.

The first step would be pitching the Royal Foundation Board, which oversaw my charitable projects and Willy’s and Kate’s. It was
our
foundation, so I told myself: No problem.

Also, the calendar was on my side. This was early summer 2013. Willy and Kate, weeks from having their first child, were going to be out of commission for a while. The foundation therefore didn’t have any projects in the pipeline. Its roughly seven million pounds was just sitting there, doing nothing. And if these International Warrior Games worked, they’d enhance the foundation’s profile, which would energize donors and replenish the foundation’s accounts many times over. There’d be that much more to go around when Willy and Kate came back full-time. So I was feeling supremely confident in the days leading up to my pitch.

But when the actual day came, not so much. I realized how badly I wanted this, for the soldiers and their families, and if I’m being honest: for myself. And this sudden attack of nerves kept me from being at my best. Still, I got through it, and the board said yes.

Thrilled, I reached out to Willy, expecting him to be thrilled as well.

He was sorely irritated. He wished I’d run all this by him first.

My assumption, I said, was that other people had done so.

He complained that I’d be using up all the funds in the Royal Foundation.

That’s absurd, I spluttered. I was told only a half-million-pound grant would be needed to get the games going, a fraction of the foundation’s money. Besides, it was coming from the Endeavour Fund, an arm of the foundation I’d created specifically for veterans’ recovery. The rest would come from donors and sponsors.

What was going on here? I wondered.

Then I realized: My God, sibling rivalry.

I put a hand over my eyes. Had we not got past this yet? The whole Heir versus Spare thing? Wasn’t it a bit late in the day for that tired childhood dynamic?

But even if it wasn’t, even if Willy insisted on being competitive, on turning our brotherhood into some kind of private Olympiad, hadn’t he built up an insurmountable lead? He was married, with a baby on the way, while I was eating takeaway alone over the sink.

Pa’s sink! I still lived with Pa!

Game over, man. You win.

I expected magic.
I thought this challenging, ennobling task of creating an International Warrior Games would propel me into the next phase of my postwar life. It didn’t work out like that. Instead, day by day, I felt more sluggish. More hopeless. More lost.

By the late summer of 2013 I was in trouble, toggling between bouts of debilitating lethargy and terrifying panic attacks.

My official life was all about being in public, standing up in front of people, giving speeches and talks, doing interviews, and now I found myself nearly incapable of fulfilling these basic functions. Hours before a speech or public appearance I’d be soaked with sweat. Then, during the event itself, I’d be unable to think, my mind buzzing with fear and fantasies of running away.

Time and again I just managed to stave off the urge to flee. But I could envisage a day when I wouldn’t be able to, when I’d actually sprint off a stage or burst out of a room. Indeed, that day seemed to be coming fast, and I could already picture the blaring headlines, which always made the anxiety three times worse.

The panic often started with putting on a suit first thing in the morning. Strange—that was my trigger: The Suit. As I buttoned up my shirt I could feel my blood pressure soaring. As I knotted my tie I could feel my throat closing. By the time I was pulling on the jacket, lacing the smart shoes, sweat was running down my cheeks and back.

I’d always been sensitive to heat. Like Pa. He and I would joke about it. We’re not made for this world, we said. Bloody snowmen. The dining room at Sandringham, for instance, was our version of Dante’s
Inferno.
Much of Sandringham was balmy, but the dining room was subtropical. Pa and I would always wait for Granny to look away, then one of us would jump up, sprint to a window, crack it an inch.
Ah, blessed cool air.
But the corgis always betrayed us. The cool air would make them whimper, and Granny would say:
Is there a draft?
And then a footman would promptly shut the window. (That loud thump, unavoidable because the windows were so old, always felt like the door of a jail cell being slammed.) But now, every time I was about to make any kind of public appearance, no matter the venue, it felt like the
Sandringham dining room. During one speech I became so overheated that I felt sure everyone was noticing and discussing it. During one drinks reception I searched frantically for anyone else who might be experiencing the same heatstroke. I needed some assurance that it wasn’t just me.

But it was.

As is so often true of fear, mine metastasized. Soon it wasn’t merely public appearances, but all public venues. All crowds. I came to fear simply being around other human beings.

More than anything else I feared cameras. I’d never liked cameras, of course, but now I couldn’t abide them. The telltale click of a shutter opening and closing…it could knock me sideways for a whole day.

I had no choice: I began staying home. Day after day, night after night, I sat around eating takeaway, watching
24
. Or
Friends
. I think I might’ve watched every episode of
Friends
in 2013.

I decided I was a Chandler.

My
actual
friends would comment in passing that I didn’t seem myself. As if I had flu. Sometimes I’d think, Maybe I’m
not
myself. Maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe this is some kind of metamorphosis. A new self is emerging, and I’m just going to have to be this new person, this frightened person, for the rest of my days.

Or maybe this had always been me, and it was only now becoming evident? My psyche, like water, had found its level.

I ransacked Google for explanations. I plugged my symptoms into various medical search engines. I kept trying to self-diagnose, to put a name to what was wrong with me…when the answer was right under my nose. I’d met so many soldiers, so many young men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress, and I’d heard them describe how hard it was to leave the house, how uncomfortable it was to be around other people, how excruciating it was to enter a public space—especially if it was loud. I’d heard them talk about timing their visit to a shop or supermarket carefully, making sure to arrive minutes before closing time, to avoid the crowds and noise. I’d empathized with them, deeply, and yet never made the connection. It never occurred to me that I, too, was suffering from post-traumatic stress. Despite all my work with wounded soldiers, all my efforts on their behalf, all my struggles to create a games that would spotlight their condition, it never dawned on me that I was a wounded soldier.

And my war didn’t begin in Afghanistan.

It began in August 1997.

I phoned my friend
Thomas one evening. Thomas, brother of my beloved mate Henners. Thomas, so funny and witty. Thomas, with the infectious laugh.

Thomas, living reminder of better days.

I was at Clarence House, sitting on the floor of the TV room. Probably watching
Friends.

Hey, Boose, what’re you up to?

He laughed. No one else called him Boose.

Harr-eese! Hello!

I smiled. No one else called me Harr-eese.

He said he was just leaving a business dinner. He was pleased to have someone to chat with while he was making his way home.

His voice, so much like his brother’s, was an instant comfort. It made me happy, even though Thomas wasn’t happy. He, too, was struggling, he said. Going through a divorce, other challenges.

The conversation went inexorably to that original challenge, the wellspring of all challenges, Henners. Thomas missed his brother so much. Me too, I said. Man, me too.

He thanked me for speaking at an event to raise money for Henners’s charity.

Wouldn’t miss it. That’s what friends are for.

I thought of the event. And the pre-event panic attack.

Then we reminisced, randomly. Thomas and Henners, Willy and me, Saturday mornings, lounging around with Mummy, watching telly—having burping contests.

She was like a teenage boy!

She was, mate.

Going with Mummy to see Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Me and Henners mooning the security cameras at Ludgrove.

We both started laughing.

He reminded me that Henners and I were so close, people called us Jack and Russell. Maybe that was because Willy and I had Jack Russells? Oh I wondered where Henners might be. Was he with Mummy? Was he with the dead from Afghanistan? Was Gan-Gan there too? I was jolted from this train of thought by the sound of Thomas screaming.

Boose, mate, you OK?

Angry voices, a scuffle, a struggle. I put the phone on speaker, shot down the corridor, up the stairs, burst into the police room. I shouted that my mate was in trouble. We leaned over the phone, listening, but the line had already gone dead.

It was obvious: Thomas was being mugged. Luckily he’d just happened to mention the name of the restaurant where he’d had dinner. It was in Battersea. Plus, I knew where he lived. We checked a map: there was only one logical route between those two points. Several bodyguards and I raced there and found Thomas on the side of the road. Near Albert Bridge. Beaten, shaken. We took him to the nearest police station, where he signed a statement. Then we drove him home.

Along the way he kept thanking me for coming to his rescue.

I hugged him tightly.
What friends are for.

I was given a desk at
Wattisham Airfield, which I hated. I’d never wanted a desk. I couldn’t bear sitting at a desk. My father loved his desk, seemed pinned to it, enamored of it, surrounded by his books and mailbags. That was never me.

I was also given a new task. Refine my knowledge of the Apache. Perhaps on the way to becoming an instructor. That
was
a job I thought
might
be fun. Teaching others to fly.

But it wasn’t. It just didn’t feel like my calling.

Once again I broached the idea of going back to the war. Once again the answer was a hard no. Even if the Army was inclined to send me, Afghanistan was winding down.

Libya was heating up, though.
How about that?

No, the Army said—in every way they knew how, officially and unofficially, they denied my request.

Everyone has had quite enough of Harry in a war zone.

At the end of a typical working day I’d leave Wattisham, drive back to Kensington Palace. I was no longer staying with Pa and Camilla: I’d been assigned my own place, a flat on KP’s “lower ground floor,” in other words, halfway underground.

The flat had three tall windows, but they admitted little light, so the differences between dawn, dusk and midday were nominal at best. Sometimes the
question was rendered moot by Mr. R, who lived directly upstairs. He liked to park his massive gray Discovery hard against the windows, blotting out all light entirely.

I wrote him a note, politely asking if he might perhaps pull his car forward a few inches. He fired back a reply telling me to suck eggs. Then he went to Granny and asked her to tell me the same.

She never did speak to me about it, but the fact that Mr. R felt secure enough, supported enough, to denounce me to the monarch showed my true place in the pecking order. He was one of Granny’s equerries.

I should fight, I told myself. I should confront the man face-to-face. But I figured—no. The flat actually suited my mood. Darkness at noon suited my mood.

Also, it was the first time I was living on my own, somewhere other than Pa’s, so on balance I really had no complaints.

I invited a mate over one day. He said the flat reminded him of a badger sett. Or maybe I said that to him. Either way, it was true, and I didn’t mind.