Spare (52 page)

Amazing that I could even hear the music over the sound of my own
heartbeat as Meg stepped up, took my hand. The present dissolved, the past came rushing back. Our first tentative messages on Instagram. Our first meeting at Soho House. Our first trip to Botswana. Our first excited exchanges after my phone went into the river. Our first roast chicken. Our first flights back and forth across the Atlantic. The first time I told her: I love you. Hearing her say it back. Guy in splints. Steve the grumpy swan. The brutal fight to keep her safe from the press. And now here we were, the finishing line. The starting line.

For the last few months, not much had gone according to plan. But I reminded myself that none of
that
was the plan. This was the plan. This. Love.

I shot a glance at Pa, who’d walked Meg down the last part of the aisle. Not her father, but special just the same, and she was moved. It didn’t make up for her father’s behavior, for how the press had used him, but it very much helped.

Aunt Jane stood and gave a reading in honor of Mummy.
Song of Solomon.

Meg and I chose it.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away…

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm;

For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave…

Strong as death. Fierce as the grave. Yes, I thought. Yes.

I saw the archbishop extend the rings, his hands shaking. I’d forgotten, but he clearly hadn’t: twelve cameras pointed at us, two billion people watching on TV, photographers in the rafters, massive crowds outside roistering and cheering.

We exchanged the rings, Meg’s made from the same hunk of Welsh gold that had provided Kate’s.

Granny had told me that this was nearly the last of it.

Last of the gold. That was how I felt about Meg.

The archbishop reached the official part, spoke the few words that made us The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, titles bestowed by Granny, and he joined us until death parted us, though he’d already done similar days earlier, in our garden, a small ceremony, just the two of us, Guy and Pula the only witnesses. Unofficial, non-binding, except in our souls. We were grateful for every person in and around St. George’s, and watching on TV, but our love began in private, and being public had been mostly pain, so we wanted the first consecration of our love, the first vows, to be private as well. Magical as the formal ceremony was, we’d both come to feel slightly frightened of…crowds.

Underscoring this feeling: The first thing we saw upon walking back up the
aisle and out of the church, other than a stream of smiling faces, were snipers. On the rooftops, amid the bunting, behind the waterfalls of streamers. Police told me it was unusual, but necessary.

Due to the unprecedented number of threats they were picking up.

Our honeymoon was
a closely guarded secret. We left London in a car disguised as a removals van, the windows covered with cardboard, and went to the Mediterranean for ten days. Glorious to be away, on the sea, in the sun. But we were also sick. The build-up to the wedding had worn us down.

We returned just in time for the official June celebration of Granny’s birthday. Trooping the Color: one of our first public appearances as newlyweds. Everyone present was in a good mood, upbeat. But then:

Kate asked Meg what she thought of her first Trooping the Color.

And Meg joked: Colorful.

And a yawning silence threatened to swallow us all whole.

Days later Meg went off on her first royal trip with Granny. She was nervous, but they got on famously. They also bonded over their love of dogs.

She returned from the trip glowing.
We bonded
, she told me.
The Queen and I really bonded! We talked about how much I wanted to be a mom and she told me the best way to induce labor was a good bumpy car ride! I told her I’d remember that when the time came.

Things are going to turn around now, we both said.

The papers, however, pronounced the trip an unmitigated disaster. They portrayed Meg as pushy, uppity, ignorant of royal protocol, because she’d made the unthinkable mistake of getting into a car before Granny.

In truth she’d done exactly what Granny had told her to do. Granny said get in; she got in.

No matter. There were stories for days about Meg’s breach, about her overall lack of class—about her daring not to wear a hat in Granny’s presence. The Palace had specifically directed Meg not to wear a hat. Granny also wore green to honor the victims of Grenfell Tower, and no one told Meg to wear green—so they said she didn’t give a fig about the victims.

I said:
The Palace will make a phone call. They’ll correct the record.

They didn’t.

Willy and Kate invited us
for tea. To clear the air.

June 2018.

We walked over one late afternoon. I saw Meg’s eyes widen as we entered their front door, walked past their front sitting room, down their hallway, into their study.

Wow, Meg said several times.

The wallpaper, the crown molding, the walnut bookshelves lined with color-coordinated volumes, the priceless art. Gorgeous. Like a museum. And we both told them so. We complimented them lavishly on their renovation, though we also thought sheepishly of our IKEA lamps, our discount sofa recently bought on sale, with Meg’s credit card, from sofa.com.

In the study, Meg and I sat on a love seat at one end of the room, Kate opposite us on a leather-clad fender before the fireplace. Willy was to her left, in an armchair. There was a tray of tea and biscuits. For ten minutes we did the classic small talk.
How are the kids? How was your honeymoon?

Meg then acknowledged the tension among the four of us and ventured that it might go back to those early days when she’d first joined the family—a misunderstanding that had almost passed without notice. Kate thought Meg had wanted her fashion contacts. But Meg had her own. They’d got off on the wrong foot perhaps? And then, Meg added, everything got magnified by the wedding, and those infernal bridesmaids’ dresses.

But it turned out there were other things…about which we’d been unaware.

Willy and Kate were apparently upset that we hadn’t given them Easter presents.

Easter presents? Was that a thing? Willy and I had never exchanged Easter presents. Pa always made a big deal about Easter, sure, but that was Pa.

Still, if Willy and Kate were upset, we apologized.

For our part, we chipped in that we weren’t too pleased when Willy and Kate switched place cards and changed seats at our wedding. We’d followed the American tradition, placing couples next to each other, but Willy and Kate didn’t like that tradition, so their table was the only one where spouses were apart.

They insisted it wasn’t them, it was someone else.

And they said we’d done the same thing at Pippa’s wedding.

We hadn’t. Much as we’d wanted to. We’d been separated by a huge flower
arrangement between us, and though we’d desperately wanted to sit together, we hadn’t done a thing about it.

None of this airing of grievances was doing us any good, I felt. We weren’t getting anywhere.

Kate looked out into the garden, gripping the edges of the leather so tightly that her fingers were white, and said she was owed an apology.

Meg asked:
For what?

You hurt my feelings, Meghan.

When? Please tell me.

I told you I couldn’t remember something and you said it was my hormones.

What are you talking about?

Kate mentioned a phone call in which they’d discussed the timing of wedding rehearsals.

Meg said:
Oh, yes! I remember: You couldn’t remember something, and I said it’s not a big deal, it’s baby brain. Because you’d just had a baby. It’s hormones.

Kate’s eyes widened:
Yes. You talked about my hormones. We’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!

Meg’s eyes got wide too. She looked genuinely confused.
I’m sorry I talked about your hormones. That’s just how I talk with my girlfriends.

Willy pointed at Meg.
It’s rude, Meghan. It’s not what’s done here in Britain.

Kindly take your finger out of my face.

Was this really happening? Had it actually come to this? Shouting at each other about place cards and hormones?

Meg said she’d never intentionally do anything to hurt Kate, and if she ever did, she asked Kate to please just let her know so it wouldn’t happen again.

We all hugged. Kind of.

And then I said we’d better be going.

Our staff sensed the
friction, read the press, and thus there was frequent bickering around the office. Sides were taken. Team Cambridge versus Team Sussex. Rivalry, jealousy, competing agendas—it all poisoned the atmosphere.

It didn’t help that everyone was working around the clock. There were so
many demands from the press, such a constant stream of errors that needed clearing up, and we didn’t have nearly enough people or resources. At best we were able to address 10 percent of what was out there. Nerves were shattering, people were sniping. In such a climate there was no such thing as constructive criticism. All feedback was seen as an affront, an insult.

More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept.

For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg. He told me so several times, and he got cross when I told him he was out of line. He was just repeating the press narrative, spouting fake stories he’d read or been told. The great irony, I told him, was that the real villains were the people he’d imported into the office, people from government, who didn’t seem impervious to this kind of strife—but addicted to it. They had a knack for backstabbing, a talent for intrigue, and they were constantly setting our two groups of staff against each other.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, Meg managed to remain calm. Despite what certain people were saying about her, I never heard her speak a bad word about anybody, or to anybody. On the contrary, I watched her redouble her efforts to reach out, to spread kindness. She sent out handwritten thank-you notes, checked on staff who were ill, sent baskets of food or flowers or goodies to anyone struggling, depressed, off sick. The office was often dark and cold, so she warmed it up with new lamps and space heaters, all bought with her personal credit card. She brought pizza and biscuits, hosted tea parties and ice-cream socials. She shared all the freebies she received, clothes and perfumes and makeup, with all the women in the office.

I stood back in awe at her ability, or determination, to always see the good in people. The size of her heart was really brought home for me one day. I learned that Mr. R, my former upstairs neighbor when I was in the badger sett, had suffered a tragedy. His adult son had died.

Meg didn’t know Mr. R. Neither did she know the son. But she knew the family had been my neighbors, and she’d often seen them walking their dogs. So she felt tremendous sorrow for them, and wrote the father a letter, expressing condolences, telling him she wanted to give him a hug but didn’t know if it would be appropriate. With the letter she included a gardenia, to plant in the son’s memory.

A week later Mr. R appeared at our front door at Nott Cott. He handed Meg a thank-you note and gave her a tight hug.

I felt so proud of her, so regretful about my feud with Mr. R.

More, I felt regretful about my family feuding with my wife.

We didn’t want to
wait. We both wanted to start a family straightaway. We were working crazy hours, our jobs were demanding, the timing wasn’t ideal, but too bad. This had always been our main priority.

We worried about the stress of our daily lives, that it might prevent us getting pregnant. The toll was starting to be visible on Meg; she’d lost a great deal of weight in the last year, despite all the shepherd’s pie. I’m eating more than ever, she reported—yet her weight kept dropping.

Friends recommended an ayurvedic doctor who’d helped them conceive. As I understood it, ayurvedic medicine sorted people into categories. I don’t recall which category this doctor sorted Meg into, but she did confirm our suspicion that Meg’s weight loss might be a barrier to conceiving.

Gain five pounds, the doctor promised, and you’ll get pregnant.

So Meg ate, and ate, and soon put on the recommended five pounds, and we looked hopefully at the calendar.

Towards the end of summer 2018 we went to Scotland, the Castle of Mey, to spend a few days with Pa. The bond between Meg and Pa, always strong, grew even stronger during that weekend. One night, over pre-dinner cocktails, Fred Astaire playing in the background, it emerged that Meg shared a birthdate with Pa’s favorite person: Gan-Gan.

August 4.

Amazing, Pa said with a smile.

At the memory of Gan-Gan, and the link between her and my bride, he suddenly became buoyant, telling stories I’d never heard, essentially performing, showing off for Meg.

One story in particular delighted us both, captured our imagination. It was about the selkies.

The what, Pa?

Scottish mermaids, he said. They took the form of seals and cruised along the shore outside the castle, within a stone’s throw of where we were sitting.
So, when you see a seal
, he advised,
you never can tell…Sing to it. They often sing back.

Oh, come on. You’re telling fairytales, Pa!

No, it’s absolutely true!

Did I imagine—did Pa promise—that the selkies might also grant a wish?

We talked a bit during that dinner about the stress we’d been under. If we could just convince the papers to back off, we said…for a little while.

Pa nodded. But he felt it very important to remind us—

Yes, yes, Pa. We know. Don’t read it.

At tea the next day the good vibes continued. We were all laughing, talking about one thing and another, when Pa’s butler burst into the room, pulling a land line behind him.