DURING THIS TIME I WAS LIVING in Shropshire, with Willy, who was also training to become a pilot. He’d found a cottage ten minutes from the
base, on someone’s estate, and invited me to stay with him. Or maybe I invited myself?
The cottage was cozy, charming, just up a narrow country lane and behind some thickly canopied trees. The fridge was stuffed with vacuum-
packed meals sent by Pa’s chefs. Creamy chicken and rice, beef curry. At the back of the house there were beautiful stables, which explained the horse smell in every room.
Each of us enjoyed the arrangement: our first time living together since Eton. It was fun. Better yet, we were together for the decisive moment, the triumphal unraveling of Murdoch’s media empire. After months of investigation, a gang of reporters and editors at Murdoch’s trashiest newspaper were finally being identified, handcuffed, arrested, charged with harassment of politicians, celebrities—and the Royal Family. Corruption was being exposed, finally, and punishments were forthcoming.
Among the soon-to-be-exposed villains was the Thumb, that same journalist who’d long ago published an absurd non-story about my thumb injury at Eton. I’d healed up nicely, but the Thumb had never mended his ways. On the contrary he’d got a whole lot worse. He’d moved up the ranks of the newspaper world, becoming a boss, with a whole team of Thumbs at his command (under his thumb?), many of them hacking willy-nilly into people’s phones. Blatant criminality, which the Thumb claimed, laughably, to know nothing about.
Also going down? Rehabber Kooks! The same loathsome editor who’d cooked up my rehab charade—she’d been “resigned.” Two days later the cops arrested her.
Oh, the relief we felt when we heard. For us and our country.
A similar fate was soon to befall the others, all the plotters and stalkers and liars. Soon enough they would all lose their jobs, and their ill-gotten fortunes, amassed during one of the wildest crime sprees in British history.
Justice.
I was overjoyed. So was Willy. More, it was glorious to finally have our suspicions validated and our circle of closest friends vindicated, to know that we hadn’t been stark, staring paranoid. Things really had been amiss. We’d been betrayed, as we’d always suspected, but not by bodyguards or best mates. It was those Fleet Street weasels yet again. And the Metropolitan Police, who’d inexplicably failed to do their jobs, refusing time and again to investigate and arrest obvious lawbreakers.
The question was why? Pay-offs? Collusion? Fear? We’d soon find out.
The public was horrified. If journalists could use the mighty powers vested in them for evil, then democracy was in sorry shape. More, if journalists were allowed to probe and foil the security measures that notable figures and government officials required to stay safe, then they’d ultimately show terrorists how to do it too. And then it would be a free-for-all. No one would be safe.
For generations Britons had said with a wry laugh: Ah, well, of course our newspapers are shit—but what can you do? Now they weren’t laughing. And there was general agreement: We need to do something.
There were even death rattles coming from the most popular Sunday newspaper, Murdoch’s News of the World. The leading culprit in the hacking scandal, its very survival was in doubt. Advertisers were talking about fleeing, readers were talking about boycotts. Was it possible? Murdoch’s baby—his grotesque two-headed circus baby—might finally expire?
A new era was at hand?
Strange. While all this put Willy and me in a chipper mood, we didn’t talk much about it explicitly. We had loads of laughs in that cottage, passed many happy hours talking about all kinds of things, but seldom that. I wonder if it was just too painful. Or maybe still too unresolved. Maybe we didn’t want to jinx it, didn’t dare pop the cork on the champagne until we saw photos of Rehabber Kooks and the Thumb sharing a cell.
Or maybe there was some tension under the surface between us, which I wasn’t fully comprehending. While sharing that cottage we agreed to a rare joint interview, in an airplane hangar at Shawbury, during which Willy griped endlessly about my habits. Harry’s a slob, he said. Harry snores.
I turned and gave him a look. Was he joking?
I cleaned up after myself, and I didn’t snore. Besides, our rooms were separated by thick walls, so even if I did snore there was no way he heard. The reporters were having fits of giggles about it all, but I cut in: Lies! Lies!
That only made them laugh harder. Willy too.
I laughed as well, because we often bantered like that, but when I look back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something else at play. I was training to get to the front lines, the same place Willy had been training to get, but the Palace had scuttled his plans. The Spare, sure, let him run around a battlefield like a chicken with its head cut off, if that’s what he likes.
But the Heir? No.
So Willy was now training to be a search and rescue pilot, and perhaps feeling quietly frustrated about it. In which case, he was seeing it all wrong. He was doing remarkable, vital work, I thought, saving lives every week. I was proud of him, and full of respect for the way he was dedicating himself wholeheartedly to his preparation.
Still, I should’ve figured out how he might have been feeling. I knew all too well the despair of being pulled from a fight for which you’ve spent years preparing.
