WHENEVER I WAS HOME from school, I hid.
I hid upstairs in the nursery. I hid inside my new video games. I played Halo endlessly against an American who called himself Prophet and knew me only as BillandBaz.
I hid in the basement beneath Highgrove, usually with Willy.
We called it Club H. Many assumed the H stood for Harry, but in fact it stood for Highgrove.
The basement had once been a bomb shelter. To get down to its depths you went through a heavy white ground-level door, then down a steep flight of stone stairs, then groped your way along a damp stone floor, then descended three more stairs, walked down a long damp corridor with a low arched roof, then past several wine cellars, wherein Camilla kept her fanciest bottles, on past a freezer and several storerooms full of paintings, polo gear, and absurd gifts from foreign governments and potentates. (No one wanted them, but they couldn’t be regifted or donated, or thrown out, so they’d been carefully logged and sealed away.) Beyond that final storeroom were two green doors with little brass handles, and on the other side of those was Club H. It was windowless, but the brick walls, painted bone white, kept it from feeling claustrophobic. Also, we kitted out the space with nice pieces from various royal residences. Persian rug, red Moroccan sofas, wooden table, electric dartboard. We also put in a huge stereo system. It didn’t sound great, but it was loud. In a corner stood a drinks trolley, well stocked, thanks to creative borrowing, so there was always a faint aroma of beer and other booze. But thanks to a big vent in good working order, there was also the smell of flowers. Fresh air from Pa’s gardens was pumped in constantly, with hints of lavender and honeysuckle.
Willy and I would start a typical weekend evening by sneaking into a nearby pub, where we’d have a few drinks, a few pints of Snake Bite, then round up a group of mates and bring them back to Club H. There were never more than fifteen of us, though somehow there were never less than fifteen either.
Names float back to me. Badger. Casper. Nisha. Lizzie. Skippy. Emma. Rose. Olivia. Chimp. Pell. We all got on well, and sometimes a bit more than well. There was plenty of innocent snogging, which went hand in hand with the not-so-
innocent drinking. Rum and Coke, or vodka, usually in tumblers, with liberal splashes of Red Bull.
We were often tipsy, and sometimes smashed, and yet there wasn’t a single time that anyone used or brought drugs down there. Our bodyguards were always nearby, which kept a lid on things, but it was more than that. We had a sense of boundaries.
Club H was the perfect hideout for a teenager, but especially this teenager. When I wanted peace, Club H provided. When I wanted mischief, Club H was the safest place to act out. When I wanted solitude, what better than a bomb shelter in the middle of the British countryside?
Willy felt the same. I often thought he seemed more at peace down there than anywhere else on earth. And it was a relief, I think, to be somewhere that he didn’t feel the need to pretend I was a stranger.
When it was just the two of us down there, we’d play games, listen to music— talk. With Bob Marley, or Fatboy Slim, or DJ Sakin, or Yomanda thumping in the background, Willy sometimes tried to talk about Mummy. Club H felt like the one place secure enough to broach that taboo subject.
Just one problem. I wasn’t willing. Whenever he went there…I changed the subject.
He’d get frustrated. And I wouldn’t acknowledge his frustration. More likely, I couldn’t even recognize it.
Being so obtuse, so emotionally unavailable, wasn’t a choice I made. I simply wasn’t capable. I wasn’t close to ready.
One topic that was always safe was how wonderful it felt to be unseen. We talked at length about the glory, the luxury, of privacy, of spending an hour or two away from the press’s prying eyes. Our one true haven, we said, where those lot can never ever find us.
And then they found us.
At the tail end of 2001 Marko visited me at Eton. We met for lunch at a café in the heart of town, which I thought quite a treat. Plus an excuse to bunk off, leave school grounds? I was all smiles.
But no. Marko, looking grim, said this was no larky outing.
What’s up, Marko?
I’ve been asked to find out the truth, Harry. About what?
I suspected he was referring to my recent loss of virginity. Inglorious episode, with an older woman. She liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion. Quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze. Among the many things about it that were wrong: It happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub.
Obviously someone had seen us.
The truth, Marko?
About whether or not you’re doing drugs, Harry. What?
It seemed that the editor of Britain’s biggest tabloid had recently phoned my father’s office to say she’d uncovered “evidence” of my doing drugs in various locations, including Club H. Also, a bike shed behind a pub. (Not the pub where I’d lost my virginity.) My father’s office immediately dispatched Marko to take a clandestine meeting with one of this editor’s lieutenants, in some shady hotel room, and the lieutenant laid out the tabloid’s case. Now Marko laid it out for me.
He asked again if it was true. Lies, I said. All lies.
He went item by item through the editor’s evidence. I disputed all of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The basic facts, the details, it was all wrong.
I then questioned Marko. Who the hell is this editor?
Loathsome toad, I gathered. Everyone who knew her was in full agreement that she was an infected pustule on the arse of humanity, plus a shit excuse for a journalist. But none of that mattered, because she’d managed to wriggle her way into a position of great power and lately she was focusing all that power upon… me. She was hunting the Spare, straight out, and making no apologies for it. She wouldn’t stop until my balls were nailed to her office wall.
I was lost. For doing basic teenage stuff, Marko? No, boy, no.
In this editor’s estimation, Marko said, I was a drug addict. A what?
And one way or another, Marko said, that was the story she was going to publish.
I offered a suggestion about what this editor could do with her story. I told Marko to go back, tell her she had it all wrong.
He promised he would.
He rang me days later, said he’d done what I asked, but the editor didn’t believe him, and she was now vowing not only to get me, but to get Marko.
Surely, I said, Pa will do something. Stop her. Long silence.
No, Marko said. Pa’s office had decided on a…different approach. Rather than telling the editor to call off the dogs, the Palace was opting to play ball with her. They were going full Neville Chamberlain.
Did Marko tell me why? Or did I learn only later that the guiding force behind this putrid strategy was the same spin doctor Pa and Camilla had recently hired, the same spin doctor who’d leaked the details of our private summits with Camilla? This spin doctor, Marko said, had decided that the best approach in this case would be to spin me—right under the bus. In one swoop this would appease the editor and also bolster the sagging reputation of Pa. Amid all this unpleasantness, all this extortion and gamesmanship, the spin doctor had discovered one silver lining, one shiny consolation prize for Pa. No more the unfaithful husband, Pa would now be presented to the world as the harried single dad coping with a drug-addled child.
