ON THE EVE OF THE wedding Willy and I had dinner at Clarence House with Pa. Also present were James and Thomas—Willy’s best men.
The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie. The public expected me to be best man, and thus the Palace saw no choice but to say that I was. In truth, Willy didn’t want me giving a best-man speech. He didn’t think it safe to hand me a live mic and put me in a position to go off script. I might say something wildly inappropriate.
He wasn’t wrong.
Also, the lie gave cover to James and Thomas, two civilians, two innocents. Had they been outed as Willy’s best men, the rabid press would’ve chased them, tracked them, hacked them, investigated them, ruined their families’ lives. Both chaps were shy, quiet. They couldn’t handle such an onslaught, and shouldn’t be expected to.
Willy explained all this to me and I didn’t blink. I understood. We even had a laugh about it, speculating about the inappropriate things I might’ve
said in my speech. And so the pre-wedding dinner was pleasant, jolly, despite Willy visibly suffering from standard groom jitters. Thomas and James forced him to down a couple of rum and Cokes, which did seem to settle his nerves. Meanwhile I regaled the company with tales of the North Pole. Pa was very interested, and sympathetic about the discomfort of my frostnipped ears and cheeks, and it was an effort not to overshare and tell him also about my equally tender penis. Upon arriving home I’d been horrified to discover that my nether regions were frostnipped as well, and while the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn’t.
It was becoming more of an issue by the day.
I don’t know why I should’ve been reluctant to discuss my penis with Pa, or all the gentlemen present. My penis was a matter of public record, and indeed some public curiosity. The press had written about it extensively. There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised. Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.
After dinner we moved to the TV room and watched the news. Reporters were interviewing folks who’d camped just outside Clarence House, in hopes of getting a front-row seat at the wedding. We went to the window and looked at the thousands of them, in tents and bedrolls, up and down the Mall, which runs between Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. Many were drinking, singing. Some were cooking meals on portable stoves. Others were wandering about, chanting, celebrating, as if they were getting married in the morning.
Willy, rum-warmed, shouted: We should go and see them!
He texted his security team to say he wanted to do so. The security team answered: Strongly advise against.
No, he shot back. It’s the right thing to do. I want to go out there. I need to see them!
He asked me to come. He begged.
I could see in his eyes that the rum was really hitting hard. He needed a wingman.
Painfully familiar role for me. But all right.
We went out, walked the edge of the crowd, shaking hands. People wished Willy well, told him they loved him, loved Kate. They gave us both the same teary smiles, the same looks of fondness and pity we’d seen that day in August 1997. I couldn’t help but shake my head. Here it was, the eve of Willy’s Big Day, one of the happiest of his life, and there was simply no avoiding the echoes of his Worst Day. Our Worst Day.
I looked at him several times. His cheeks were bright crimson, as if he was the one with frostnip. Maybe that was the reason we bade farewell to the crowd, turned in early. He was tipsy.
But also, emotionally, physically, we were both all in. We needed rest.
I was shocked, therefore, when I went to collect him in the morning and he looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink. His face was gaunt, his eyes red.
You OK?
Yeah, yeah, fine.
But he wasn’t.
He was wearing the bright red uniform of the Irish Guards, not his Household Cavalry frock coat uniform. I wondered if that was the matter. He’d asked Granny if he could wear his Household Cavalry kit and she’d turned him down. As the Heir, he must wear the Number One Ceremonial, she decreed. Willy was glum at having so little say in what he wore to get married, at having his autonomy taken from him on such an occasion. He’d told me several times that he felt frustrated.
I assured him that he looked bloody smart in the Harp of Ireland, with the Crown Imperial and the forage cap with the regimental motto: Quis Separabit? Who shall separate us?
It didn’t seem to make an impression.
I, on the other hand, did not look smart, nor did I feel comfortable, in my Blues and Royals uniform, which protocol dictated that I wear. I’d never worn it before and hoped not to wear it again anytime soon. It had huge
shoulder pads, and huge cuffs, and I could imagine people saying: Who’s this idiot? I felt like a kitsch version of Johnny Bravo.
We climbed into a plum-colored Bentley. Neither of us said anything as we waited for the driver to pull out.
As the car pulled away, finally, I broke the silence. You reek.
The aftermath of last night’s rum.
I jokingly cracked a window, pinched my nose—offered him some mints. The corners of his mouth bent slightly upward.
After two minutes, the Bentley stopped. Short trip, I said. I peered out of the window:
Westminster Abbey.
As always, my stomach lurched. I thought: Nothing like getting married in the same place where you did your mum’s funeral.
I shot a glance at Willy. Was he thinking the same thing?
We went inside, shoulder to shoulder. I looked again at his uniform, his cap. Who shall separate us? We were soldiers, grown men, but walking with that same tentative, boyish gait as when we’d trailed Mummy’s coffin. Why did the adults do that to us? We marched into the church, down the aisle, made for a side room off the altar—called the Crypt. Everything in that building spoke of death.
It wasn’t just the memories of Mummy’s funeral. More than three thousand bodies lay beneath us, behind us. They were buried under the pews, wedged into the walls. War heroes and poets, scientists and saints, the cream of the Commonwealth. Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Chaucer, plus thirteen kings and eighteen queens, they were all interred there.
It was still so hard to think of Mummy in the realm of Death. Mummy, who’d danced with Travolta, who’d quarreled with Elton, who’d dazzled the Reagans—could she really be in the Great Beyond with the spirits of Newton and Chaucer?
Between these thoughts of Mummy and death and my frostnipped penis, I was in danger of becoming as anxious as the groom. So I started pacing, shaking my arms, listening to the crowd murmuring in the pews. They’d
been seated two hours before we arrived. You just know many of them need a pee, I said to Willy, trying to break the tension.
No reaction. He stood up, started pacing too.
I tried again. The wedding ring! Oh, no—where is it? Where did I put the bloody thing?
Then I pulled it out. Phew!
He gave a smile, went back to his pacing.
I couldn’t have lost that ring if I’d wanted to. A special kangaroo pouch had been sewn inside my tunic. My idea, actually, that was how seriously I took the solemn duty and honor of bearing it.
Now I took the ring from its pouch, held it to the light. A thin band of Welsh gold, shaved off a hunk given to the Royal Family nearly a century before. The same hunk had provided a ring for Granny when she married, and for Princess Margaret, but it was nearly exhausted now, I’d heard. By the time I got married, if I ever got married, there might be none left.
I don’t recall leaving the Crypt. I don’t recall walking out to the altar. I have no memory of the readings, or removing the ring, or handing it to my brother. The ceremony is mostly a blank in my mind. I recall Kate walking down the aisle, looking incredible, and I recall Willy walking her back up the aisle, and as they disappeared through the door, into the carriage that would convey them to Buckingham Palace, into the eternal partnership they’d pledged, I recall thinking: Goodbye.
I loved my new sister-in-law, I felt she was more sister than in-law, the sister I’d never had and always wanted, and I was pleased that she’d forever be standing by Willy’s side. She was a good match for my older brother. They made each other visibly happy, and therefore I was happy too. But in my gut I couldn’t help feeling that this was yet another farewell under this horrid roof. Another sundering. The brother I’d escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone—forever. Who could deny it? He’d never again be first and foremost Willy. We’d never again ride together across the Lesotho countryside with capes blowing behind us. We’d never again share a horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly. Who shall separate us?
Life, that’s who.
I’d had the same feeling when Pa got married, the same presentiment, and hadn’t it come true? In the Camilla era, as I’d predicted, I saw him less and less. Weddings were joyous occasions, sure, but they were also low-key funerals, because after saying their vows people tended to disappear.
It occurred to me then that identity is a hierarchy. We are primarily one thing, and then we’re primarily another, and then another, and so on, until death—in succession. Each new identity assumes the throne of Self, but takes us further from our original self, perhaps our core self—the child. Yes, evolution, maturation, the path towards wisdom, it’s all natural and healthy, but there’s a purity to childhood, which is diluted with each iteration. As with that hunk of gold, it gets whittled away.
At least, that was the thought I had that day. My big brother Willy had moved on, moved up the line, and thereafter he’d be first a husband, then a father, then grandfather, and so on. He’d be a new person, many new persons, and none of them would be Willy. He’d be The Duke of Cambridge, the title chosen for him by Granny. Good for him, I thought. Great for him. But a loss for me all the same.
I think my reaction was also somewhat reminiscent of what I’d felt the first time I climbed inside an Apache. After being accustomed to having someone at my side, someone to model, I found myself terrifyingly alone.
And a eunuch to boot.
What was the universe out to prove by taking my penis at the same moment it took my brother?
Hours later, at the reception, I made a few quick remarks. Not a speech, just a brief two-minute intro to the real best men. Willy told me several times that I was to act as “compère.”
I had to look the word up.
The press reported extensively on my preparations for this intro, how I phoned Chels and tested some of the lines on her, bristling but ultimately caving when she urged me not to reference “Kate’s killer legs,” all of which was horseshit. I never phoned Chels about my remarks; she and I weren’t in regular touch, which was why Willy checked with me before inviting her to the wedding. He didn’t want either of us to feel uncomfortable.
The truth is, I road-tested a few lines on JLP, but mostly I winged it. I told a few jokes about our childhood, a silly story about Willy’s days playing water polo, and then I read a few hilarious snippets culled from letters of support sent in by the general public. One American bloke wrote to say that he’d wanted to make something special for the new Duchess of Cambridge, so he’d set out to capture a ton of ermine, traditional fur of royalty. This overenthusiastic Yank explained that he’d intended to catch one thousand ermines for the item of clothing he had in mind (God, was it a tent?) but unfortunately he’d only managed to scare up…two.
Rough year for ermine, I said.
Still, I added, the Yank improvised, made the best of things, as Yanks do, and cobbled together what he had, which I now held aloft.
The room let out a collective gasp. It was a thong.
Soft, furry, a few silken strings attached to a V-shaped ermine pouch no larger than the ring pouch inside my tunic.
After the collective gasp came a warm, gratifying wave of laughter.
When it died away I closed on a serious note. Mummy: How she’d have loved to have been here. How she’d have loved Kate, and how she’d have loved seeing this love you’ve found together.
As I spoke these words I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to risk making eye contact with Pa or Camilla—and above all with Willy. I hadn’t cried since Mummy’s funeral, and I wasn’t going to break that streak now.
I also didn’t want to see anyone’s face but Mummy’s. I had the clearest vision in my mind of her beaming on Willy’s Big Day, and having a proper laugh about that dead ermine.
