William and Harry (13 page)

William, who prefers red wine to beer, had not had a drink for months, and although the wine was rather sharp it went down well. As they sat drinking a noise at the window startled them. Outside three local and rather short photographers were jumping up and down trying to get a picture of William. Suddenly the door swung open and they rushed inside only to be promptly ejected by Dominic, who removed each by the scruff of his neck. The curtains were drawn and the group was left to enjoy themselves in peace. As the drink flowed, the antics became more outrageous, and it was William’s idea to incorporate a basket of fresh eggs on the bar into their drinking games. Carefully he placed the eggs in the pockets of his trousers and the others took turns to hurl missiles at him. Several hours and too many drinks later they returned to camp worse for wear and covered in egg yolk. William, who had decided to go to the party as Superman, changed into his thermals and used his poncho for a cape. After
borrowing a pair of pants from one of the girls, which he wore over his longjohns, he headed for the party.

According to several of the volunteers he spent the evening ‘dancing like a lunatic’ before launching himself onto the row of tents at the end of the night. The following morning he left as he had arrived, quietly and separately. Mark Dyer had flown back to Santiago to collect his charge, who was feeling particularly wretched thanks to the cheap Chilean wine that William had nicknamed ‘cat’s piss’. As he was fast-tracked into the VIP lounge at Santiago, he readily accepted the upgrade to first class and slept solidly on the flight back home.

While William was enjoying his gap year, Harry was counting down the days until the end of school. He had been in regular contact with his brother and longed to share William’s adventure but he had A levels to pass first. Unsurprisingly the teenage prince was more interested in having fun than knuckling down, and it was no great surprise when he failed two of his AS levels at the start of his final year. Harry had planned to take geography, art and the history of art, but eventually dropped the latter. Although he had always been in the lowest stream, he was teased over his poor grades and further humiliated when his tutors insisted he joined the year below to catch up. But even that didn’t prove sufficient motivation for Harry to start working.

It was May 2003 and just weeks ahead of his crucial A-level exams when Harry and his friend Guy Pelly, who was still a regular guest at Highgrove, sneaked off to the Royal Berkshire Polo Club in Windsor. Guy, who had a reputation for mooning, something Harry had also taken up in an attempt to put off the tourists who congregated on the street outside Manor House, decided to climb to the top of a forty-foot-high VIP marquee
and strip naked. With Harry in tow it sparked a major security alert, and when he returned to Manor House there were stern words from Dr Gailey. None of the boys were allowed out after hours during exam time and Harry had flouted the rules. Charles called his son to voice his concern and the following morning Harry’s illicit excursion was front-page news under the headline S
O
H
ARRY
, H
OW
’
S
Y
OUR
A-L
EVEL
R
EVISION
G
OING
? The answer was it wasn’t going well at all, and the prince was on his way to failing his two remaining subjects. It seemed that no matter how many times he had his wrists slapped, Harry would not learn.

I witnessed Harry’s partying first hand that spring. I was a young show business reporter at the time for the
Mail on Sunday
and happened to be covering an event at the Kensington Roof Gardens, which is conveniently located just opposite the newspaper’s Derry Street offices in west London. I had gone outside onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air and to admire the restaurant’s famous flamingos when Harry suddenly emerged from the VIP room. Although it was April it was cool, and as I stood shivering in the night air, Harry waved me in. ‘You look freezing,’ he said as he tried to light his cigarette in the wind. ‘Do come and join my party.’ His protection officers were seated at a coffee table at the far end of the room while Harry sat on the floor surrounded by eight pretty girls all clinging to his every word. One of his friends fetched me a glass of champagne while Harry held court. The subject of exams was only mentioned in passing; instead it was plans for the summer that were being excitedly discussed. As he smoked one cigarette down to the filter before lighting another, Harry announced that it was going to be a
summer of fun. The fact that it was well after midnight on a Thursday didn’t seem to matter to anyone.

He was only eighteen, but his confidence was impressive. He was clearly very sociable, and as he sipped his vodka and cranberry it was obvious that he was relaxed and self-assured among girls. He had recently been voted Britain’s most eligible bachelor by society magazine
Harper’s Bazaar
, which cemented his standing among the social elite, not that he needed a poll to prove he was popular. Harry was never short of female admirers and had started dating Laura Gerard-Leigh, the pretty eighteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy stockbroker who lived in Wiltshire.

The couple had been introduced through Guy Pelly, and Laura quickly became part of the princes’ Gloucestershire set. She was a good match for Harry: she loved the outdoors and in May the couple allowed themselves to be photographed at the Badminton Horse Trials. As they sat chatting on the lawn, it was clear from their body language that they were an item. The story, which ran on page 7 of the
Mail on Sunday
, was a great exclusive. Although she didn’t have aristocratic links like most members of the Glosse Posse, Laura came from ‘good stock’ and lived in a sprawling mill house in the village of Calne, which was a two-hour drive from Eton. ‘They have an awful lot in common and share a boisterous sense of humour,’ remarked one of their mutual friends. ‘He seems to be quite serious at this point.’

A pupil at St Mary’s school in Calne, Laura would drive to Eton to watch Harry play the wall game at weekends and afterwards they would go for Sunday lunch in Windsor. Harry was barred from bringing girls back to Manor House, so every few weekends, accompanied by a protection officer, they would stay at
Laura’s parents’ London town house in Parsons Green. Although the relationship fizzled out after just four months the pair remained close, and the following July (2004) they were seen kissing at the Cartier International Day at the Guards Polo Club, the social event of the summer.

Harry was conscious that he was known as ‘hooray Harry’ in the press and used his eighteenth birthday in September 2002 to attempt to dispel what he perceived to be the myth of his playboy antics. ‘The attention-seeker going too far, too soon, too often’ warned the royal commentators of the day. Harry disagreed and used his first official press interview to argue that his critics were wrong. He was not, he insisted, just a party animal. He had seen his Uncle Andrew labelled a playboy and his Aunt Margaret a bon vivant in her heyday, and he was determined not to be stereotyped as the royal rebel. There was far more to him than just partying, and to prove his point he spent the days leading up to his birthday visiting sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. While it may have been a carefully orchestrated PR exercise, there was no mistaking Harry’s natural ease in the role. He was tactile and down-to-earth and able to make the sickest children laugh. While William tended to be nervous in front of the cameras, Harry managed to joke with the photographers while making sure the importance of his visit was relayed. He hoped to continue his late mother’s charity work. ‘I want to carry on the things that she didn’t quite finish. I have always wanted to, but was too young.’ These were powerful words. After all, the public had seen remarkably little of Harry since he walked in his mother’s cortège when he was just thirteen. By his eighteenth birthday he had grown into an articulate,
confident and handsome young man. On the advice of his father’s advisers at Clarence House, he also apologised for his drug-taking and underage drinking. ‘That was a mistake and I learned my lesson.’ It would not be long before Harry was apologising again.

The day had finally arrived. Harry carefully placed the black and white portrait of his mother taken by Mario Testino for
Vanity Fair
in his trunk. It was 12 June 2003, his final day at Eton, and Harry had almost finished packing up the debris of the last five years. The sun streamed through his window as he peeled his favourite poster of the Whistler ski resort in Canada with the slogan ‘Great skiing with you’ from the wall. He placed it carefully in his ottoman along with his Indian wall hanging and his St George’s flag. Polo stick in hand, he said a fond farewell to the room that had been his home and made his way down the stairs to say his goodbyes.

The boy who had walked through Eton’s famous entrance holding his father’s hand was now a young man. Casually dressed in a blazer, shirt and baggy chinos with a St George’s cross on the belt buckle, Harry strode out of Manor House. Carrying his clothes in a black bin bag he walked across Windsor Bridge for the last time. ‘Yes!’ he shouted, punching the air. He was finally free.

The Palace wasted no time announcing that he would be applying to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, thus becoming the first senior royal to join the British army in forty years. Harry had always wanted to join the army, and he had spent hours excitedly discussing Sandhurst with Mark Dyer, who had attended the military school before joining the Welsh Guards.

Like his brother, Harry had been promised a summer of fun before his gap year officially started. Just to wind up his father he had mooted the idea of spending a year in Argentina playing polo knowing full well that the suggestion, which was only half-intended as a joke, would send his father into a panic. He had also wanted to do a ski season in Klosters, the picturesque Swiss ski resort where Charles skied for years until he had to give it up because of back problems. Having become friendly with Mr and Mrs Bolliger, the owners of the family-run five-star Walserhof Hotel where the royal family often stayed, Harry had reportedly been offered a job working in the hotel’s kitchen and cellars, where he would learn about fine wine and cooking.

Concerned that his younger son already had more than sufficient knowledge when it came to alcohol, Charles dismissed the suggestion immediately; once again taking the advice of his trusted aides, he decided that Harry would begin his gap year in Australia working as a cowboy on a cattle station in the outback. Charles had spent several months in Australia as a schoolboy when he went on a brief attachment to Timbertop, an outback offshoot of the Geelong Church of England Grammar School. He had loved the chance to escape Gordonstoun, which he believed was the worst experience of his life, and loved Australia, where he learned to ‘conquer my shyness’. He was adamant that Harry’s trip was to be educational as well as enjoyable. The fact that it coincided with the Rugby World Cup in Sydney meant there were no arguments. As far as Harry was concerned, Australia was a brilliant suggestion.

The summer came and went in a drink-fuelled haze as Harry celebrated his A-level results – B in art and D in geography. Charles insisted he was delighted: ‘I am very proud of Harry.
He has worked hard for these examinations and I am very pleased with today’s results.’ He was especially pleased with his son’s B in art. It was Harry’s best grade, and he had showed some of his aboriginal-inspired canvases as part of his final submission, but his pride was dented when his art teacher Sarah Forsyth alleged that he had cheated. Miss Forsyth, who claimed she had been unfairly sacked from Eton the year that Harry left, submitted the claim in 2004 as part of her employment tribunal case. She claimed that she had taped Harry admitting that he had written just a ‘tiny tiny bit, about a sentence’ of a piece of coursework that counted towards his final grade. Eton refuted the thirty-year-old teacher’s claims and Harry issued a statement denying categorically that he had cheated, but it was an accusation that privately devastated him. He had never claimed to be the brightest member of his family, but he was a gifted artist.

Despite the setback, Harry moved on. He had the grades he needed for Sandhurst and a summer to enjoy. He didn’t stray far from St James’s Palace and was such a regular at the nearby Chelsea watering hole Crazy Larry’s on the King’s Road that it became known as ‘Crazy Harry’s’. He also enjoyed drinking at the Collection, a sophisticated two-tiered bar on the Fulham Road, and at Nam Long-Le Shaker, a discreet bar on the Old Brompton Road, Harry held the record for being able to drink three of their White Panther cocktails in a row. The delicious but potent mix of rum, vodka and coconut milk is served in a giant glass and usually requires two people to drink it. When he wanted VIP treatment Harry would head to Mark Dyer’s gastropub the So Bar, where lock-ins became a frequent occurrence, much to the annoyance of the prince’s protection officers,
who would sit in their cars outside the venue waiting for Harry into the early hours. It was common for Harry to be out most nights and very soon he was the subject of more lurid headlines. H
ARRY IS
O
UT OF
C
ONTROL
the front pages announced amid reports that the prince’s team of personal protection officers needed more back-up.

September 22 2003 could not have come sooner for the beleaguered press officers at Clarence House, who had spent the summer fielding suggestions that Harry’s gap year was descending into a drunken farce. Suitably there was an alcohol-fuelled farewell party at the Purple nightclub in Chelsea, hosted by William’s friend nightclub promoter Nick House. But as Harry left one media row behind him in England, he faced another as soon as he landed on the tarmac in Sydney. In Australia, where the republican movement was growing, there was outrage over the cost of the prince’s trip. TV and radio stations were inundated with calls from angry members of the public demanding to know why they were footing the £250,000 bill for Harry’s round-the-clock security. The Palace insisted that twelve full-time protection officers together with state police were necessary to protect the prince. It was just months since the unscheduled appearance of Aaron Barschak, the self-styled ‘comedy terrorist’ who managed to gatecrash Prince William’s twenty-first birthday party at Windsor Castle, and in Australia nine years before a deranged student had fired two shots from a starting pistol at Prince Charles, who was on an official visit. The Palace were not prepared to take any risks.