1-42（在线收听）

42.

The remedy to all problems, as always, was work. Hard, sweaty, nonstop labor, that was what theHills had to offer, and plenty of it, and I couldn’t get enough. The harder I worked, the less I feltthe heat, and the easier it was to talk—or not talk—around the supper table.

But this wasn’t merely work. Being a jackaroo required stamina, to be sure, but it alsodemanded a certain artistry. You had to be a whisperer with the animals. You had to be a reader ofthe skies, and the land.

You also had to possess a superior level of horsemanship. I’d come to Australia thinking Iknew my way around horses, but the Hills were Huns, each born in a saddle. Noel was the son of aprofessional polo player. (He’d been Pa’s former polo coach.) Annie could stroke a horse’s noseand tell you what that beast was thinking. And George climbed into a saddle more easily than mostpeople get into their beds.

A typical working day began in the middle of the night. Hours before dawn George and Iwould stumble outside, tackle the first chores, trying to get as much done as possible before thesun ascended. At first light we’d saddle up, gallop to the edges of the Hills’ forty thousand acres(double the size of Balmoral) and begin to muster. That is, move the herd of cattle from here tothere. We’d also search for individual cows that had strayed overnight, and drive them back intothe herd. Or load some onto a trailer and take them to another section. I rarely knew exactly whywe were moving these cows or those, but I got the bottom line:

Cows need their space.

I felt them.

Whenever George and I found a group of strays, a rebellious little cattle cabal, that wasespecially challenging. It was vital to keep them together. If they scattered, we’d be proper fucked.

It would take hours to round them up and then the day would be wrecked. If one darted off, into astand of trees, say, George or I would have to ride full speed after it. Every now and then, mid-chase, you’d get whipped out of the saddle by a low-hanging branch, maybe knocked cold. Whenyou came to, you’d do a check for broken bones, internal bleeding, while your horse stoodmorosely over you.

The trick was never letting a chase last too long. Long chases wore out the cow, reduced itsbody fat, slashed its market value. Fat was money, and there was no margin for error with Aussiecattle, which had so little fat to begin with. Water was scarce, grass was scarce, and what littlethere was often got grubbed by kangaroos, which George and his family viewed as other peopleview rats.

I always flinched, and chuckled, at the way George spoke to errant cattle. He harangued them,abused them, cursed them, favoring one curse word in particular, a word many people go alifetime without using. George couldn’t go five minutes. Most people dive under a table when theyhear this word, but for George it was the Swiss Army knife of language—endless applications anduses. (He also made it sound almost charming, with his Aussie accent.)It was merely one of dozens of words in the complete George lexicon. For instance, a fat was aplump cow ready for slaughter. A steer was a young bull that should’ve been castrated but hadn’tbeen yet. A weaner was a calf newly split from its mother. A smoko was a cigarette break. Tuckerwas food. I spent a lot of late 2003 sitting high in the saddle, watching a weaner while sucking asmoko and dreaming of my next tucker.

Sometimes hard, sometimes tedious, mustering could be unexpectedly emotional. Youngfemales were easier, they went where you nudged them, but young males didn’t care for beingbossed around, and what they really didn’t like was being split from their mums. They cried,moaned, sometimes charged you. A wildly swung horn could ruin a limb or sever an artery. But Iwasn’t afraid. Instead…I was empathetic. And the young males seemed to know.

The one job I wouldn’t do, the one piece of hard work I shied from, was snipping balls. Everytime George brought out that long shiny blade I’d raise my hands. No, mate, can’t do it.

Suit yourself.

At day’s end I’d take a scalding shower, eat a gargantuan supper, then sit with George on theporch, rolling cigarettes, sipping cold beers. Sometimes we’d listen to his small CD player, whichmade me think of Pa’s wireless. Or Henners. He and the other boy went to borrow another CDplayer…Often we’d just sit gazing into the distance. The land was so tabletop flat you could seethunderstorms brewing hours ahead of when they arrived, the first spidery bolts flicking the far-offland. As the bolts got thicker, and closer, wind would race through the house, ruffling the curtains.

Then the rooms would flutter with white light. The first thunderclaps would shake the furniture.

Finally, the deluge. George would sigh. His parents would sigh. Rain was grass, rain was fat. Rainwas money.

If it didn’t rain, that also felt like a blessing, because after a windstorm the clear sky would bepeppered with stars. I’d point out to George what the gang in Botswana had pointed out to me. Seethat bright one next to the moon? That’s Venus. And over there, that’s Scorpius—best place to seeit is the southern hemisphere. And there’s Pleiades. And that’s Sirius—brightest star in the sky.

And there’s Orion: the Hunter. All comes down to hunting, doesn’t it? Hunters, hunted…What’s that, Harry?

Nothing, mate.

The thing I found endlessly mesmerizing about the stars was how far away they all were. Thelight you saw was born hundreds of centuries ago. In other words, looking at a star, you werelooking at the past, at a time long before anyone you knew or loved had lived.

Or died.

Or disappeared.

George and I usually hit the sack about eight thirty. Often we were too tired to take off ourclothes. I was no longer afraid of the dark, I craved it. I slept as if dead, woke as if reborn. Sore,but ready for more.

There were no days off. Between the relentless work, the relentless heat, the relentless cows, Icould feel myself being whittled down, lighter each morning by a kilo, quieter by a few dozenwords. Even my British accent was being pared away. After six weeks I sounded nothing likeWilly and Pa. I sounded more like George.

And dressed a bit like him as well. I took to wearing a slouchy felt cowboy hat like his. Icarried one of his old leather whips.

Finally, to go with this new Harry, I acquired a new name. Spike.

It happened like this. My hair had never fully recovered after I’d let my Eton schoolmatesshave it. Some strands shot up like summer grass, some lay flat, like lacquered hay. George oftenpointed at my head and said: You look a right mess! But on a trip to Sydney, to see the RugbyWorld Cup, I’d made an official appearance at the Taronga Zoo, and I’d been asked to pose for aphoto with something called an echidna. A cross between a hedgehog and an anteater, it had hardspiky hair, which was why the zookeepers named it Spike. It looked, as George would say, a rightmess.

More to the point, it looked like me. A lot like me. And when George happened to see a photoof me posing with Spike, he yelped.

Haz—that thing’s got your hair!

Thereafter, he never called me anything but Spike. And then my bodyguards took up thechorus. Indeed, they made Spike my code name on the radio. Some even printed up T-shirts,which they wore while guarding me: Spike 2003.

Soon enough my mates at home got wind of this new nickname, and adopted it. I becameSpike, when I wasn’t Haz, or Baz, or Prince Jackaroo, or Harold, or Darling Boy, or Scrawny, anickname given me by some Palace staff. Identity had always been problematic, but with a halfdozen formal names and a full dozen nicknames it was turning into a hall of mirrors.

Most days I didn’t care what people called me. Most days I thought: Don’t care who I am, solong as it’s someone new, someone other than Prince Harry. But then an official package wouldarrive from London, from the Palace, and the old me, the old life, the royal life, would comeracing back.

The packet usually arrived in the everyday mail, though sometimes it was under the arm of anew bodyguard. (There was a constant changing of the guard, every couple of weeks, to keep themfresh and let them see their families.) Inside the packet would be letters from Pa, office paperwork,plus some briefs about charities in which I was involved. All stamped: Att HRH Prince Henry ofWales.

One day the package contained a series of memos from the Palace comms team about adelicate matter. Mummy’s former butler had penned a tell-all, which actually told nothing. It wasmerely one man’s self-justifying, self-centering version of events. My mother once called thisbutler a dear friend, trusted him implicitly. We did too. Now this. He was milking herdisappearance for money. It made my blood boil. I wanted to fly home, confront him. I phoned Pa,announced that I was getting on a plane. I’m sure it was the one and only conversation I had withhim while I was in Australia. He—and then, in a separate phone call, Willy—talked me out of it.

All we could do, they both said, was issue a united condemnation.

So we did. Or they did. I had nothing to do with the drafting. (Personally, I’d have gone muchfurther.) In measured tones it called out the butler for his treachery, and publicly requested ameeting with him, to uncover his motives and explore his so-called revelations.

The butler answered us publicly, saying he welcomed such a meeting. But not for anyconstructive purpose. To one newspaper he vowed: “I’d love to give them a piece of my mind.”

He wanted to give us a piece of his mind?

I waited anxiously for the meeting. I counted the days.

Of course it didn’t happen.

I didn’t know why; I assumed the Palace quashed it.

I told myself: Shame.

I thought of that man as the one errant steer that got away that summer.