Spare

Adding to this general sense of bedlam was the psychiatric hospital down the road. Broadmoor. Some time before I came to Ludgrove, a Broadmoor patient had escaped and killed a child in one of the nearby villages. In response Broadmoor installed a warning siren, and now and then they’d test it, to make sure it was in working order. A sound like Doomsday. Mr. Marston’s bell on steroids.

I mentioned this to Pa one day. He nodded sagely. He’d recently visited a similar place as part of his charitable work. The patients were mostly gentle, he assured me, though one stood out. A little chap who claimed to be the Prince of Wales.

Pa said he’d wagged a finger at this impostor and severely reprimanded him. Now look here. You cannot be the Prince of Wales! I’m the Prince of Wales.

The patient merely wagged his finger back. Impossible! I’m the Prince of Wales!

Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire. He’d always end with a burst of philosophizing: If this mental patient could be so thoroughly convinced of his identity, no less than Pa, it raised some very Big Questions indeed. Who could say which of us was sane? Who could be sure they weren’t the mental patient, hopelessly deluded, humored by friends and family? Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!

He’d laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt. One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism. Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn’t the child of Prince Charles. They couldn’t get enough of this “joke,” for some reason. Maybe it made them feel better about their lives that a young prince’s life was laughable.

Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good to drop. The press rehashed it, embroidered it, and there was even talk that some reporters were seeking my DNA to prove it—my first intimation that, after torturing my mother and sending her into hiding, they would soon be coming for me.

To this day nearly every biography of me, every longish profile in a paper or magazine, touches on Major Hewitt, treats the prospect of his paternity with some seriousness, including a description of the moment Pa finally sat me down for a proper heart-to-heart, reassuring me that Major Hewitt wasn’t my real father. Vivid scene, poignant, moving, and wholly made up. If Pa had any thoughts about Major Hewitt, he kept them to himself.

15.

My mother legendarily said there were three people in her marriage. But her maths was off.

She left Willy and me out of the equation.

We didn’t understand what was going on with her and Pa, certainly, but we intuited enough, we sensed the presence of the Other Woman, because we suffered the downstream effects. Willy long harbored suspicions about the Other Woman, which confused him, tormented him, and when those suspicions were confirmed he felt tremendous guilt for having done nothing, said nothing, sooner.

I was too young, I think, to have suspicions. But I couldn’t help but feel the lack of stability, the lack of warmth and love, in our home.

Now, with Mummy missing, the maths swung hard in Pa’s favor. He was free to see the Other Woman, openly, as often as he liked. But seeing wasn’t sufficient. Pa wanted to be public about it. He wanted to be aboveboard. And the first step towards that aim was to bring “the boys” into the fold.

Willy went first. He’d bumped into the Other Woman, once, at the palace, but now he was formally summoned from Eton for a high-stakes private meeting. At Highgrove, I think. Over tea, I believe. It went well, I gathered from Willy later, though he didn’t go into details. He merely gave me the impression that the Other Woman, Camilla, had made an effort, which he appreciated, and that was all he cared to say.

My turn came next. I told myself: No big deal. Just like getting an injection. Close your eyes, over before you know it.

I have a dim recollection of Camilla being just as calm (or bored) as me. Neither of us much fretted about the other’s opinion. She wasn’t my mother, and I wasn’t her biggest hurdle. In other words, I wasn’t the Heir. This bit with me was mere formality.

I wonder what we found to talk about. Horses, probably. Camilla loved them, and I knew how to ride. Hard to think of any other subject we might’ve scrounged up.