2-31（在线收听）

31.

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 withhim. Or maybe I invited myself?

The cottage was cozy, charming, just up a narrow country lane and behind some thicklycanopied trees. The fridge was stuffed with vacuum-packed meals sent by Pa’s chefs. Creamychicken and rice, beef curry. At the back of the house there were beautiful stables, whichexplained the horse smell in every room.

Each of us enjoyed the arrangement: our first time living together since Eton. It was fun. Betteryet, we were together for the decisive moment, the triumphal unraveling of Murdoch’s mediaempire. After months of investigation, a gang of reporters and editors at Murdoch’s trashiestnewspaper were finally being identified, handcuffed, arrested, charged with harassment ofpoliticians, celebrities — and the Royal Family. Corruption was being exposed, finally, andpunishments were forthcoming.

Among the soon-to-be-exposed villains was the Thumb, that same journalist who’d long agopublished an absurd non-story about my thumb injury at Eton. I’d healed up nicely, but the Thumbhad never mended his ways. On the contrary he’d got a whole lot worse. He’d moved up the ranksof the newspaper world, becoming a boss, with a whole team of Thumbs at his command (underhis thumb?), many of them hacking willy-nilly into people’s phones. Blatant criminality, whichthe Thumb claimed, laughably, to know nothing about.

Also going down? Rehabber Kooks! The same loathsome editor who’d cooked up my rehabcharade—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 enoughthey would all lose their jobs, and their ill-gotten fortunes, amassed during one of the wildestcrime sprees in British history.

Justice.

I was overjoyed. So was Willy. More, it was glorious to finally have our suspicions validatedand 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 bybodyguards or best mates. It was those Fleet Street weasels yet again. And the MetropolitanPolice, who’d inexplicably failed to do their jobs, refusing time and again to investigate and arrestobvious 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 securitymeasures that notable figures and government officials required to stay safe, then they’d ultimatelyshow 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 needto do something.

There were even death rattles coming from the most popular Sunday newspaper, Murdoch’sNews 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 itexplicitly. We had loads of laughs in that cottage, passed many happy hours talking about all kindsof 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 photosof Rehabber Kooks and the Thumb sharing a cell.

Or maybe there was some tension under the surface between us, which I wasn’t fullycomprehending. While sharing that cottage we agreed to a rare joint interview, in an airplanehangar 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 itall, 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’thelp but wonder if there wasn’t something else at play. I was training to get to the front lines, thesame 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 quietlyfrustrated 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 wasdedicating himself wholeheartedly to his preparation.

Still, I should’ve figured out how he might have been feeling. I knew all too well the despair ofbeing pulled from a fight for which you’ve spent years preparing.