2-2（在线收听）

2.

I pondered quitting the Army. What was the point of staying if I couldn’t actually be a soldier?

I talked it over with Chels. She was torn. On the one hand she couldn’t hide her relief. On theother she knew how much I wanted to be there for my team. She knew that I’d long felt persecutedby the press, and that the Army had been the one healthy outlet I’d found.

She also knew that I believed in the Mission.

I talked it over with Willy. He had complicated feelings as well. He sympathized, as a soldier.

But as a sibling? A highly competitive older brother? He couldn’t bring himself to totally regretthis turn of events.

Most of the time Willy and I didn’t have any truck with all that Heir-Spare nonsense. But nowand then I’d be brought up short and realize that on some level it really did matter to him.

Professionally, personally, he cared where I stood, what I was doing.

Not getting comfort from any quarter, I looked for it in vodka and Red Bull. And gin andtonic. I was photographed around this time going into or coming out of multiple pubs, clubs, houseparties, at wee hours.

I didn’t love waking to find a photo of myself on the front page of a tabloid. But what I reallycouldn’t bear was the sound of the photo being taken in the first place. That click, that terriblenoise, from over my shoulder or behind my back or within my peripheral vision, had alwaystriggered me, had always made my heart race, but after Sandhurst it sounded like a gun cocking ora blade being notched open. And then, even a little worse, a little more traumatizing, came thatblinding flash.

Great, I thought. The Army has made me more able to recognize threats, to feel threats, tobecome adrenalized in the face of those threats, and now it’s casting me aside.

I was in a bad, bad place.

Paps, somehow, knew. Around this time they began hitting me with their cameras,deliberately, trying to incite me. They’d brush, smack, jostle, or just straight wallop me, hoping toget a rise, hoping I’d retaliate, because that would create a better photo, and thus more money intheir pockets. A snap of me in 2007 fetched about thirty thousand pounds. Down payment on aflat. But a snap of me doing something aggressive? That might be a down payment on a house inthe countryside.

I got into one scrap that became big news. I came away with a swollen nose, and mybodyguard was livid. You made those paps rich, Harry! You happy?

Happy? No, I said. No, I’m not happy.

The paps had always been grotesque people, but as I reached maturity they were worse. Youcould see it in their eyes, their body language. They were more emboldened, more radicalized, justas young men in Iraq had been radicalized. Their mullahs were editors, the same ones who’dvowed to do better after Mummy died. The editors promised publicly to never again sendphotographers chasing after people, and now, ten years later, they were back to their old ways.

They justified it by no longer sending their own photographers, directly; instead they contractedwith pap agencies, who sent the photographers, a distinction without a shred of difference. Theeditors were still inciting and handsomely rewarding thugs and losers to stalk the Royal Family, oranyone else unlucky enough to be deemed famous or newsworthy.

And no one seemed to give a shit. I remember leaving a club in London and being swarmed bytwenty paps. They surrounded me, then surrounded the police car in which I was sitting, threwthemselves across the bonnet, all wearing football scarves around their faces and hoods over theirheads, the uniform of terrorists everywhere. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, and Iknew no one cared. Price you pay, people would say, though I never understood what they meant.

Price for what?

I was particularly close to one of my bodyguards. Billy. I called him Billy the Rock, becausehe was so solid, so dependable. He once pounced on a grenade someone tossed at me from acrowd. Luckily, it turned out not to be a real one. I promised Billy I wouldn’t push any more paps.

But neither could I just stroll into their ambushes. So, when we left a club, I said, You’re going tohave to stuff me into the boot of the car, Billy.

He looked at me, wide-eyed. Really?

That’s the only way I won’t be tempted to have a go at them, and they won’t be able to makeany money out of me.

Win-win.

I didn’t tell Billy that this was something my mother used to do.

Thus began a very strange routine between us. When leaving a pub or club in 2007, I’d havethe car pull into a back alley or underground parking lot, climb into the boot and let Billy shut thelid, and I’d lie there in the dark, hands across my chest, while he and another bodyguard ferriedme home. It felt like being in a coffin. I didn’t care.