Spare (56 page)

Days later, Meg and I welcomed the Bee into Frogmore, made him comfortable in our new sitting room, offered him a glass of rosé, gave a detailed presentation. He took meticulous notes, frequently putting a hand over his mouth and shaking his head. He’d seen the headlines, he said, but he’d not appreciated the full impact this might have on a young couple.

This deluge of hate and lies was unprecedented in British history, he said.
Disproportionate to anything I’ve ever seen.

Thank you, we said. Thank you for seeing it.

He promised to discuss the matter with all the necessary parties and get back to us soon with an action plan, a set of concrete solutions.

We never heard from him again.

Meg and I were on the
phone with Elton John and his husband, David, and we confessed: We need help.

We’re sort of losing it here, guys
.

Come to us,
Elton said.

By which he meant their home in France.

Summer 2019.

So we did. For a few days we sat on their terrace and soaked up their sunshine. We spent long healing moments gazing out at the azure sea, and it felt decadent, not just because of the luxurious setting. Freedom of any kind, in any measure, had come to feel like scandalous luxury. To be out of the fishbowl for even an afternoon felt like day release from prison.

One afternoon we took a scooter ride with David, around the local bay, down the coastal road. I was driving, Meg was on the back, and she threw out her arms and shouted for joy as we zoomed through little towns, smelt people’s dinners from open windows, waved to children playing in their gardens. They all waved back and smiled. They didn’t know us.

The best part of the visit was watching Elton and David and their two boys fall in love with Archie. Often I’d catch Elton studying Archie’s face and I knew what he was thinking: Mummy. I knew because it happened so often to me as well. Time and again I’d see an expression cross Archie’s face and it would bring me up short. I nearly said so to Elton, how much I wished my mother could hold her grandson, how often it happened that, while hugging Archie, I felt her—or wanted to. Every hug tinged with nostalgia; every tuck-in touched with grief.

Does anything bring you face-to-face with the past like parenthood?

On the last night we were all experiencing that familiar end-of-holiday malaise:
Why can’t it be like this forever?
We were drifting from the terrace to the pool, and back again, Elton offering cocktails, David and I chatting about
the news. And the sorry state of the press. And what it meant for the state of Britain.

We got onto books. David mentioned Elton’s memoir, at which he’d been toiling for years. It was finally done, and Elton was mighty proud of it, and the publication date was drawing near.

Bravo, Elton!

Elton mentioned that it was going to be serialized.

Is that so?

Yes. Daily Mail.

He saw my face. He quickly looked away.

Elton, how in the absolute—?

I want people to read it!

But, Elton—? The very people who’ve made your life miserable?

Exactly. Who better to excerpt it? Where better than the very newspaper that’s been so poisonous to me my whole life?

Who better? I just…I don’t understand.

It was a warm night, so I’d already been sweating. But now beads were dripping off my forehead. I reminded him of the specific lies the
Mail
had famously printed about him. Hell—he’d sued them, just over a decade earlier, after they claimed he forbade people at a charity event from speaking to him.

They’d ultimately written him a check for a hundred thousand pounds.

I reminded him that he’d stirringly said in one interview: “They can say I’m a fat old c—. They can say I’m an untalented bastard. They can call me a poof. But they mustn’t lie about me.”

He didn’t have an answer.

But I didn’t push it.

I loved him. I’ll always love him.

And I also didn’t want to spoil the holiday.

It felt glorious to
watch an entire country fall in love with my wife.

South Africa, that is.

September 2019.

Another foreign tour, representing the Queen, and another triumph. From Cape Town to Johannesburg, people couldn’t get enough of Meg.

We both felt a bit more confident, therefore, a bit more courageous, just days before our return home, when we strapped on the battle armor and announced that we were suing three of the four British tabloids (including the one that printed Meg’s letter to her father) over their disgraceful conduct, and over their longstanding practice of hacking into people’s phones.

It was partially down to Elton and David. At the end of our recent visit they’d introduced us to a barrister, an acquaintance of theirs, a lovely fellow who knew more about the phone-hacking scandal than anyone I’d ever met. He’d shared with me his expertise, plus loads of open-court evidence, and when I told him I wished there was something I could do with it, when I complained that we’d been blocked at every turn by the Palace, he offered a breathtakingly elegant work-around.

Why not hire your own lawyer?

I stammered:
You mean…are you telling me we could just…?

What a thought. It had never occurred to me.

I’d been so conditioned to do as I was told.

I rang Granny to tell
her beforehand. Pa too. And I sent Willy a text.

I also told the Bee, giving him advance notice of the lawsuit, letting him know we had a statement ready to go, asking him to please redirect to our office all the press inquiries it would inevitably trigger. He wished us luck! It was amusing, therefore, when I heard that he and the Wasp were claiming to have had no advance warning.

In announcing the lawsuit I laid out my case to the world:

My wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences—a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son…I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been…Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself…I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.

The lawsuit wasn’t covered as widely as, say, Meg’s daring to shut her own car door. In fact, it was barely covered at all. Nonetheless, friends took note. Many texted:
Why now?

Simple. In a few days the privacy laws in Britain were going to change in the tabloids’ favor. We wanted our case to be heard before a crooked bat was introduced into the game.

Friends also asked:
Why sue at all when you’re riding so high in the press? The South Africa tour was a triumph, coverage was wildly positive.

That’s the whole point
, I explained.
This isn’t about wanting or needing good press. It’s about not letting people get away with abuse. And lies. Especially the kind of lies that can destroy innocents.

Maybe I sounded a bit self-righteous. Maybe I sounded as if I was on my high horse. But shortly after announcing our lawsuit I felt energized by a ghastly story in the
Express.

How Meghan Markle’s flowers may have put Princess Charlotte’s life at risk.

This latest “scandal” concerned the flower crowns worn by our bridesmaids, more than a year earlier. Included in the crowns were a few lilies of the valley, which can be poisonous to children. Provided the children
eat
the lilies.

Even then, the reaction would be discomfort, concerning to parents, but only in the rarest cases would such a thing be fatal.

Never mind that an official florist put together these crowns. Never mind that it wasn’t Meg who made this “dangerous decision.” Never mind that previous royal brides, including Kate and my mother, had also used lilies of the valley.

Never mind all that. The story of Meghan the Murderess was just too good.

An accompanying photo showed my poor little niece wearing her crown, face contorted in a paroxysm of agony, or a sneeze. Alongside this photo was a shot of Meg looking sublimely unconcerned about the imminent death of this angelic child.

I was summoned to
Buckingham Palace. A lunch with Granny and Pa. The invitation was contained in a terse email from the Bee, and the tone wasn’t: Would you mind popping around?

It was more: Get your arse over here.

I threw on a suit, jumped into the car.

The Bee and the Wasp were the first faces I saw when I walked into the room. An ambush. I thought this was to be a family lunch. Apparently not.

Alone, without my staff, without Meg, I was confronted directly about my legal action. My father said it was massively damaging to the reputation of the family.

How so?

It makes our relationship with the media complicated.

Complicated. There’s a word.

Anything you do affects the whole family.

One could say the same about all your actions and decisions. They affect us as well. Like, for instance, wining and dining the same editors and journalists who’ve been attacking me and my wife…

The Bee or the Wasp jumped in to remind me:
One has to have a relationship with the press…Sir, we’ve talked about this before!

A relationship yes. But not a sordid affair.

I tried a new tack.
Everyone in this family has sued the press, including Granny. Why’s this any different?

Chirping crickets. Silence.

There was some more wrangling, and then I said:

We had no other option. And we wouldn’t have had to do it if you’d all protected us. And protected the monarchy in the process. You’re doing a disservice to yourselves by not protecting my wife.

I looked around the table. Stony faces. Was it incomprehension? Cognitive dissonance? A long-term mission at play? Or…did they really not know? Were they so deep inside a bubble inside a bubble that they really hadn’t fully appreciated how bad things were?

For instance,
Tatler
magazine quoting an old Etonian saying I’d married Meg because “foreigners” like her are “easier” than girls “with the right background.”

Or the
Daily Mail
saying Meg was “upwardly mobile,” because she’d gone from “slaves to royalty” in just 150 years.

Or the social media posts about her being a “yacht girl” and an “escort,” or calling her a “gold-digger,” and “a whore,” and “a bitch,” and “a slut,” and the N-word—repeatedly. Some of those posts were in the comments section on the pages of all three Palaces’ social media accounts—and still hadn’t been expunged.

Or the tweet that said: “Dear Duchess, I’m not saying that I hate you but I hope your next period happens in a shark tank.”

Or the revelation of racist texts from Jo Marney, girlfriend of UKIP leader Henry Bolton, including one saying that my “black American” fiancée would
“taint” the Royal Family, setting the stage for “a black king,” and another averring that Ms. Marney would never have sex with “a Negro.”

“This is Britain, not Africa.”

Or the
Mail
complaining that Meg couldn’t keep her hands off her baby bump, that she was rubbing it and rubbing it as if she were a succubus.

Things had got so out of hand, seventy-two women in Parliament, from both main parties, had condemned the “colonial undertones” of all newspaper coverage of The Duchess of Sussex.

None of these things had merited one comment, public or private, from my family.

I knew how they rationalized it all, saying it was no different from what Camilla got. Or Kate. But it
was
different. One study looked closely at four hundred vile tweets about Meg. Employing a team of data specialists and computer analysts the study found that this avalanche of hate was wildly atypical, light-years from anything directed at Camilla or Kate. A tweet calling Meg “the queen of monkey island” had no historical precedent or equivalent.

And this wasn’t about hurt feelings or bruised egos. Hate had physical effects. There was a ton of science showing how unhealthy it is to be publicly hated and mocked. Meanwhile, the wider societal effects were even scarier. Certain kinds of people are more susceptible to such hate, and incited by it. Hence the package of suspicious white powder that had been sent to our office, with a disgusting racist note attached.

I looked at Granny, looked around the room, reminded them that Meg and I had been coping with a wholly unique situation, and doing it all by ourselves. Our dedicated staff was too small, too young, grossly underfunded.

The Bee and the Wasp harrumphed and said we should’ve let it be known that we were under-resourced.

Let it be known?
I said I’d begged them repeatedly, all of them, and one of our top aides had sent in pleas as well—multiple times.

Granny looked directly at the Bee and the Wasp:
Is this true?

The Bee looked her right in the eye, and, with the Wasp nodding vigorously in assent, said:
Your Majesty, we never received any of these requests for support.

Meg and I attended
the WellChild Awards, an annual event that honored children suffering from serious illnesses. October 2019.

I’d attended many times through the years, having been a royal patron of the organization since 2007, and it was always gutting. The children were so brave, their parents so proud—and tortured. Various awards were given that night for inspiration, fortitude, and I was presenting one to an especially resilient preschooler.

I walked onstage, began my brief remarks, and caught sight of Meg’s face. I thought back to a year ago, when she and I attended this event just weeks after taking that home pregnancy test. We’d been filled with hope, and worry, like all expectant parents, and now we had a healthy little boy at home. But these parents and children hadn’t been so lucky. Gratitude and sympathy converged in my heart, and I choked up. Unable to get the words out, I held the lectern tight and leaned forward. The presenter, who’d been a friend of my mother, stepped over and gave my shoulder a rub. It helped, as did the burst of applause, which gave me a moment to restart my vocal cords. Soon after, I got a text from Willy. He was in Pakistan on tour. He said I was clearly struggling, and he was worried about me.