2-63（在线收听）

63.

I was given a desk at Wattisham Airfield, which I hated. I’d never wanted a desk. I couldn’t bearsitting at a desk. My father loved his desk, seemed pinned to it, enamored of it, surrounded by hisbooks and mailbags. That was never me.

I was also given a new task. Refine my knowledge of the Apache. Perhaps on the way tobecoming an instructor. That was a job I thought might be fun. Teaching others to fly.

But it wasn’t. It just didn’t feel like my calling.

Once again I broached the idea of going back to the war. Once again the answer was a hard no.

Even if the Army was inclined to send me, Afghanistan was winding down.

Libya was heating up, though. How about that?

No, the Army said—in every way they knew how, officially and unofficially, they denied myrequest.

Everyone has had quite enough of Harry in a war zone.

At the end of a typical working day I’d leave Wattisham, drive back to Kensington Palace. Iwas no longer staying with Pa and Camilla: I’d been assigned my own place, a flat on KP’s “lowerground floor,” in other words, halfway underground.

The flat had three tall windows, but they admitted little light, so the differences between dawn,dusk and midday were nominal at best. Sometimes the question was rendered moot by Mr. R, wholived directly upstairs. He liked to park his massive gray Discovery hard against the windows,blotting out all light entirely.

I wrote him a note, politely asking if he might perhaps pull his car forward a few inches. Hefired back a reply telling me to suck eggs. Then he went to Granny and asked her to tell me thesame.

She never did speak to me about it, but the fact that Mr. R felt secure enough, supportedenough, to denounce me to the monarch showed my true place in the pecking order. He was one ofGranny’s equerries.

I should fight, I told myself. I should confront the man face-to-face. But I figured—no. The flatactually suited my mood. Darkness at noon suited my mood.

Also, it was the first time I was living on my own, somewhere other than Pa’s, so on balance Ireally had no complaints.

I invited a mate over one day. He said the flat reminded him of a badger sett. Or maybe I saidthat to him. Either way, it was true, and I didn’t mind.

We were chatting, my mate and I, having a drink, when suddenly a sheet dropped down infront of my windows. Then the sheet began to shake. My mate stood, went to the window andsaid: Spike…what in the…? Falling from the sheet was a cascade of what looked to be—brownconfetti?

No.

Glitter?

No.

My mate said: Spike, is that hair?

It was. Mrs. R was giving a trim to one of her sons, shaking out the sheet in which she’dcollected the clippings. The real problem, however, was that my three windows were open and itwas a breezy day. Gusts of fine hair blew into the flat. My mate and I coughed, laughed, pickedstrands off our tongues.

What didn’t come into the flat landed like summer rain on the shared garden, which just thenwas blooming with mint and rosemary.

For days I went around composing a harsh note to Mrs. R in my head. I never sent it. I knew Iwas being unfair: she didn’t know she was hairing me out. More, she didn’t know the real sourceof my antipathy towards her. She was guilty of an even more egregious vehicular crime than herhusband. Every day Mrs. R parked her car in Mummy’s old spot.

I can still see her gliding into that space, right where my mother’s green BMW used to be. Itwas wrong of me, and I knew it was wrong, but on some level I condemned Mrs. R for it.