1-15（在线收听）

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. Willylong harbored suspicions about the Other Woman, which confused him, tormented him, and whenthose 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 OtherWoman, 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 thefold.

Willy went first. He’d bumped into the Other Woman, once, at the palace, but now he wasformally 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 merelygave 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 muchfretted about the other’s opinion. She wasn’t my mother, and I wasn’t her biggest hurdle. In otherwords, 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 howto ride. Hard to think of any other subject we might’ve scrounged up.

I recall wondering, right before the tea, if she’d be mean to me. If she’d be like all the wickedstepmothers in storybooks. But she wasn’t. Like Willy, I did feel real gratitude for that.

At last, with these strained Camilla summits behind us, there was a final conference with Pa.

So, what do you boys think?

We thought he should be happy. Yes, Camilla had played a pivotal role in the unraveling ofour parents’ marriage, and yes, that meant she’d played a role in our mother’s disappearance, butwe understood that she’d been trapped like everyone else in the riptide of events. We didn’t blameher, and in fact we’d gladly forgive her if she could make Pa happy. We could see that, like us, hewasn’t. We recognized the vacant looks, the empty sighs, the frustration always visible on hisface. We couldn’t be absolutely sure, because Pa didn’t talk about his feelings, but we’d piecedtogether, through the years, a fairly accurate portrait of him, based on little things he’d let slip.

For instance, Pa confessed around this time that he’d been “persecuted” as a boy. Granny andGrandpa, to toughen him up, had shipped him off to Gordonstoun, a boarding school, where hewas horrendously bullied. The most likely victims of Gordonstoun bullies, he said, were creativetypes, sensitive types, bookish types—in other words, Pa. His finest qualities were bait for thetoughs. I remember him murmuring ominously: I nearly didn’t survive. How had he? Head down,clutching his teddy bear, which he still owned years later. Teddy went everywhere with Pa. It wasa pitiful object, with broken arms and dangly threads, holes patched up here and there. It looked, Iimagined, like Pa might have after the bullies had finished with him. Teddy expressed eloquently,better than Pa ever could, the essential loneliness of his childhood.

Willy and I agreed that Pa deserved better. Apologies to Teddy, Pa deserved a propercompanion. That was why, when asked, Willy and I promised Pa that we’d welcome Camilla intothe family.

The only thing we asked in return was that he not marry her. You don’t need to remarry, wepleaded. A wedding would cause controversy. It would incite the press. It would make the wholecountry, the whole world, talk about Mummy, compare Mummy and Camilla, and nobody wantedthat. Least of all Camilla.

We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. Just please don’t marry her. Just betogether, Pa.

He didn’t answer.

But she answered. Straightaway. Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to playthe long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown. (With Pa’s blessing, wepresumed.) Stories began to appear everywhere, in all the papers, about her private conversationwith Willy, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willy,of course.

They could only have been leaked by the one other person present.

And the leaking had obviously been abetted by the new spin doctor Camilla had talked Pa intohiring.