A MONTH LATER it was half-term. I was going home at last.
Wait—no, I wasn’t.
Pa, apparently, didn’t want me to spend the break wandering aimlessly around St. James’s Palace, where he’d been mostly living since his breakup with Mummy, and where Willy and I had lived whenever it was our allotted time with Pa. He feared what I might get up to in that big palace all by myself. He feared I might glimpse a newspaper, overhear a radio. More, he feared I might be photographed through an open window, or while playing with my toy soldiers in the gardens. He could imagine reporters trying to speak to me, shouting questions. Hi, Harry, do you miss your mum? The nation was in a state of hysterical grief, but the press’s hysteria had veered into psychosis.
Worst of all, Willy wouldn’t be at home to watch over me. He was at Eton.
So Pa announced that he’d be taking me with him on a planned work trip. To South Africa.
South Africa, Pa? Really?
Yes, darling boy. Johannesburg.
He had a meeting with Nelson Mandela…and the Spice Girls?
I was thrilled. And baffled. The Spice Girls, Pa? He explained that the Spice Girls were giving a concert in Johannesburg, so they were calling on President
Mandela to pay their respects. Great, I thought, that explains why the Spice Girls are going to be there…what about us? I didn’t get it. I’m not sure Pa wanted me to get it.
The truth was, Pa’s staff hoped a photo of him standing alongside the world’s most revered political leader and the world’s most popular female musical act would earn him some positive headlines, which he sorely needed. Since Mummy’s disappearance he’d been savaged. People blamed him for the divorce and thus for all that followed. His approval rating around the world was single digits. In Fiji, to pick just one example, a national holiday in his honor had been rescinded.
Whatever the official reason for the trip, I didn’t care. I was just glad to be going along. It was a chance to get away from Britain. Better yet, it was proper time with Pa, who seemed sort of checked out.
Not that Pa hadn’t always been a bit checked out. He’d always given an air of being not quite ready for parenthood—the responsibilities, the patience, the time. Even he, though a proud man, would’ve admitted as much. But single parenthood? Pa was never made for that.
To be fair, he tried. Evenings, I’d shout downstairs: Going to bed, Pa! He’d always shout back cheerfully: I’ll be there shortly, darling boy! True to his word, minutes later he’d be sitting on the edge of my bed. He never forgot that I didn’t like the dark, so he’d gently tickle my face until I fell asleep. I have the fondest memories of his hands on my cheeks, my forehead, then waking to find him gone, magically, the door always considerately left open a crack.
Other than those fleeting moments, however, Pa and I mostly coexisted. He had trouble communicating, trouble listening, trouble being intimate face-to-face. On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow. The letter would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished. I’d smile, place it under my pillow, but also wonder why he hadn’t said this moments ago, while seated directly across from me.
Thus the prospect of days and days of unrestricted Pa time was exhilarating.
Then came the reality. This was a work trip for Pa. And for me. The Spice Girls concert represented my first public appearance since the funeral, and I knew, through intuition, through bits of overheard conversations, that the public’s curiosity about my welfare was running high. I didn’t want to let them down, but I also wanted them all to go away. I remember stepping onto the red carpet, screwing a smile onto my face, suddenly wishing I was in my bed at St. James’s Palace.
Beside me was Baby Spice, wearing white plastic shoes with chunky twelve-inch platform heels. I fixated on those heels while she fixated on my cheeks. She kept pinching them. So chubby! So cute! Then Posh Spice surged forward and clutched my hand. Farther down the line I spied Ginger Spice, the only Spice with whom I felt any connection—a fellow ginger. Also, she was world-famous for recently wearing a minidress made of the Union Jack. Why’s there a Union Jack on the coffin? She and the other Spices were cooing at me, saying things I didn’t understand, while bantering with the journalists, who were shouting at me. Harry, over here, Harry, Harry, how are you doing, Harry? Questions that weren’t questions. Questions that were traps. Questions that were flung at my head like cleavers. The journalists didn’t give a toss how I was doing, they were trying to get me to say something messy, newsy.
I gazed into their flashes, bared my teeth, said nothing.
If I was intimidated by the flashes, the Spice Girls were intoxicated. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, that was their attitude every time another flash went off. Fine by me. The more out-front they were, the more I could fade into the woodwork. I remember they talked to the press about their music and their mission. I didn’t know they had a mission, but one Spice compared the group’s crusade against sexism to Mandela’s struggle against apartheid.
At last someone said it was time for the concert to begin. Off you go. Follow your father.
Concert? Pa?
Impossible to believe. Even more impossible while it was actually happening. But I saw it with my own eyes, Pa gamely nodding to the beat and tapping his foot:
If you want my future, forget my past
If you wanna get with me, better make it fast
After, on the way out, there were more flashes. This time the Spice Girls weren’t there to deflect attention. It was just Pa and me.
I reached for him, grabbed his hand—hung on. I recall, bright as the flashes: Loving him.
Needing him.
