William and Harry (29 page)

Clarence House refused to comment, but when it emerged that William had also flown a Chinook to Sandringham and Highgrove and to his girlfriend’s house in Berkshire several weeks earlier, the episode descended into farce. Kate and her parents had apparently watched in delight as William, who had flown from RAF Odiham in Hampshire to the Middletons’ family home on 3 April, practised taking off and landing in a nearby field. By now the Chinook flights had blown up into a major row at the RAF, where top brass wanted to know why William’s superiors had allowed the sorties, during which two pilots, a navigator and a loadmaster had accompanied the prince. William’s requests to ‘buzz’ his girlfriend and his father and fly to the Isle of Wight had been approved – the flights were part of an authorised intensive training course on the Chinook – but a senior RAF source admitted, ‘We recognise how such activities might be perceived at a time of heavy operational commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

It wasn’t the first time William had been criticised for using the RAF as a private taxi service. When he was on work experience at RAF Valley in December 2005 he had flown from Anglesey to RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire in a Hawk jet so that he could collect a pair of boots. Now his Chinook flights had cast a shadow over what should have been one of his proudest military milestones.

As the row over the Chinooks rattled on, the RAF decided it would be an opportune time to send William to Afghanistan. On 26 April 2008 Prince William touched down in Kandahar.

The thirty-hour visit was top secret and only reported once
William was safely back in Britain. W
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!) was the headline in the
Daily Mail
, which reported the story two days after William had returned to the UK via RAF Lyneham. It was not quite as dramatic as it sounded. William was not qualified to fly the C-17 Globemaster. He did however take the controls during the eleven-hour flight and spent three hours on the ground in Kandahar meeting RAF servicemen. While it was nowhere near as hazardous as Harry’s deployment it was still dangerous. Two British servicemen had been killed on patrol at the same base earlier that month and William’s army mentor Major Alexis ‘Lex’ Roberts was killed by a roadside bomb there in 2007. As the main hub for British forces on the ground in Afghanistan, Kandahar Airfield was a prime target for the Taliban, but Clarence House defended the decision to send the prince: ‘Prince William has learned a lot about the force’s role in theory, so it was important for him to see it put into action.’ Essentially the trip was to familiarise him with the work of the RAF in a war zone. He also visited RAF personnel at Al Udeid in Qatar. At least William could now say that he too had been to Afghanistan.

When he returned home on 28 April, it was not for long. Having completed his attachment with the RAF, he was busy preparing for a five-week placement with the Royal Navy on board the frigate HMS
Iron Duke
, on station in the Caribbean. Kate, who had quit her job at Jigsaw, was once again left in London bored and alone. She had known that William would spend much of the year overseas on attachment and had accepted it, but his punishing work schedule only served to illustrate how much spare time she had. The media, who until now had always
been kind to her, suddenly noticed that she seemed to be doing remarkably little with her days other than wait for William to propose. It was now that, much to her annoyance, she was nicknamed Waity Katie in the British press. This was unchartered territory and Kate did not know what to do. Up until now she had been the subject of only flattering editorials and hailed as a breath of fresh air for the House of Windsor; moreover there was one person in that very house who had also sat up and taken notice of Kate Middleton.

The Queen, who has always been close to her grandson, had taken an interest in Kate in May when she represented William at Peter Phillips’ wedding to Autumn Kelly at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. William had already accepted an invitation to the wedding of Jecca Craig’s brother Batian in Kenya, and when he asked Kate if she would stand in for him, she agreed. Not only did the decision illustrate how close William was to the Craig family, it also served to highlight just how highly regarded and comfortable Kate was in royal circles. Elegant in a black fascinator hat and tailored jacket, she was happy and confident as she mingled with Charles and Camilla and other members of the extended family. Harry had planned to use the wedding to formally introduce Chelsy to the Queen now that their relationship was back on again. Since his return from the front line the pair seemed stronger than ever. They had enjoyed a romantic holiday on a houseboat in the Okavango Delta in Botswana that March, and Harry had excitedly told his grandmother about his African-born girlfriend who wanted to be a solicitor. It was Kate, however, who fascinated the Queen, and when William was inaugurated as a royal knight companion of the Order of the Garter in June
that year Kate was there once again watching from the sidelines. As William, in the traditional ostrich- and heron-plumed cap with a blue garter round his leg, processed down the Castle Hill to the annual church service, Kate, supressing a fit of the giggles, watched with Harry from the Galilee Porch. Her appearance at the ceremony of the ancient order generated even more speculation about a possible engagement.

Although they had met several times at formal occasions the Queen knew little of the girl who had enchanted her grandson, and according to sources close to her has never had one-to-one meeting with Kate. Privately she had grave concerns and believed that Kate needed to have a job and an identity in her own right before an engagement was announced. ‘The Queen is interested in Kate,’ disclosed one source close to Her Majesty. ‘She was having a conversation with a friend and asked “What is it exactly that Kate does?” It was a fair enough question.’

Since leaving her job as an accessories buyer for Jigsaw at the end of 2007 Kate had toyed with the idea of taking up photography professionally and had kept herself busy compiling a catalogue for her parents’ online business Party Pieces. But for a bright girl with a good degree the work was mind-numbingly dull. Kate was actually talented behind the lens and at the end of November 2007 helped curate an art exhibition in London at Bluebird on the King’s Road. She was not short of job offers, and the American fashion house Ralph Lauren was one of a number of retailers who were keen to appoint Kate as one of their ambassadors. ‘Ralph Lauren had an idea to get Kate on board and there was talk of her doing a job that didn’t actually involve much more than dressing up in some nice outfits,’ so I was told. The job never materialised,
however, which meant plenty of time for William, but unfortunately for Kate the newspapers had decided that her life was one long holiday. If she was not with William at Balmoral then the couple were skiing or holidaying on Mustique. Kate was there so often the press dubbed her ‘Queen of Mustique’, a title that had previously belonged to Princess Margaret. Britain was now in recession and such frivolous displays of wealth were unpalatable to the Queen. She is one of the hardest-working royals, despite her age, and that a future member of the family was without a full-time job was unacceptable to her. While the rest of the world speculated that an engagement was on the horizon for William and Kate, the Queen believed an announcement should be postponed until Kate was settled in a career. ‘It is Her Majesty’s opinion that if Kate is one day going to be William’s consort, then she needs a proper job,’ my source insisted. ‘Swan-ning from one five-star holiday resort to another is not the prerequisite for a young woman possibly destined to be queen.’

When the story broke on the front page of the
Mail on Sunday
on 1 June 2008 royal bloggers posted comments on Internet forums noting how the tide had turned for Kate. She was stung by the Queen’s criticism, but Clarence House advised her not to react and assured her that the story would go away. On this occasion however Kate ignored their advice and instructed a friend to brief
Hello!
magazine that she was in fact working full-time at her parents’ company Party Pieces. Later on a black and white photograph of Kate was posted on the company website, but it was deemed a step too far and within weeks it had been removed from the website. The Queen had quietly suggested that Kate affiliate herself with a charity, and by September she was involved
with Starlight, which works with seriously and terminally ill children. William was supportive. He understood better than most the pressures of being in the public eye and was upset that Kate was in the firing line. When she started working for Jigsaw he had told friends he was delighted that Kate was ‘finally working in the real world’, but he understood it was difficult for her to have a normal job – not least because she chose to be at his beck and call, which made a full-time job impractical. It was something Kate’s mother Carole described to family friends as an ‘impossible situation’. Meanwhile, as Kate worked on a strategy to get herself out of the news, William had decided that he wanted to join the RAF and become a search-and-rescue pilot.

The news was made official on 15 September 2008, and Clarence House’s announcement took everyone, including the Palace, by surprise. William had spent the summer with the Royal Navy. He had been banned from going to the Gulf because of security fears but had enjoyed his secondment aboard HMS
Iron Duke
and within days of his arrival had played a key role in seizing £40 million of cocaine in the Caribbean Sea north-east of Barbados. It had been widely assumed that when he returned he would quit the Household Cavalry and become a full-time working royal, but the young prince had other ideas. ‘The time I spent with the RAF earlier this year made me realise how much I love flying. Joining search and rescue is a perfect opportunity for me to serve in the forces operationally.’ The British press drew its own conclusions and labelled William a ‘reluctant figure-head’.

Joining the RAF meant William could postpone full-time official duties for at least five years. Clarence House was keen to
stress that the prince would continue with his charity work, but his commitment would be to his military career. It was a decision he had thought long and hard about and he was certain it was the right one. William had still not ruled out going to war and secretly hoped the job would take him one step closer to the front line. ‘In my eyes, if Harry can do it, then I can do it,’ he insisted. ‘You talk to everyone else and it’s impossible. But I remain hopeful that there’s a chance.’

He was aware there had been criticism over the brevity of his military attachments. The pressure group Republic had dismissed his secondment with the navy as ‘little more than a shallow PR exercise … all about selling William to the public and promoting the Windsor brand’. They also asserted, ‘There is simply no need for the Windsors to serve in the military.’ William disagreed. Now was his chance to prove he was committed to a career in the armed forces. The job was risky and the Palace knew the dangers. William would begin training in the New Year, once he had returned from the Caribbean, where he was due to go on his final attachment with special forces. It would mean transferring his commission from the army, where he was a lieutenant in the Blues and Royals, to RAF flying officer, but William had no doubts. Rescuing people was exactly the sort of worthwhile job he wanted to do and would go some way towards compensating for the fact that he might never serve in a war.

The decision, however, would have serious repercussions for his relationship with Kate. According to her friends she was as stunned as anyone when William announced that he planned to join the RAF. Being an army girlfriend had not been quite what Kate had expected, but then with the future king nothing ever
was. For William it was the start of an exciting new career; for Kate it would mean a very long wait indeed. The last time William decided to put his career first, the couple had split up. William told her if they survived this they could survive anything. She could only hope that the pledge they had made in Desroches would be strong enough to keep them together.

The clatter of polished silverware and clinking of crystal filled the dining room as the din of excited chatter reached a crescendo. Around the table fifteen young aristocrats dressed in smoking jackets and bow ties and glamorous evening dresses were drinking port. The host Arthur Landon, only son of the late Brigadier Tim Landon and inheritor of a £200 million fortune, liked to do things in style, especially when it came to entertaining royalty. William and Harry had arrived, without Chelsy, at his impressive home in north Yorkshire just before eight o’clock on a wet Friday night in November.

Dinner had been a success. The beef stew had warmed them all up, and the apple crumble had gone down a treat. Among the group were William and Harry’s best friends Guy Pelly, Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe and Astrid Harbord, Kate who was poorly with a cold and her sister Pippa. William, who had just got back from the Caribbean, where he had spent five weeks training with the SAS, was deep in conversation with Guy Pelly. As soon as the last course had been served, Guy’s girlfriend
Susanna Warren, the granddaughter of the late Earl of Carnarvon, the Queen’s racing manager and close friend, played a recital on the grand piano and when it was over Mrs Landon announced she was off to bed. She reminded them all to be in the Great Hall for breakfast at 8 a.m. – they would need something hot before they went off shooting.

The friends retired to the upstairs games room where Harry was holding court. Some of the group were playing snooker while the prince was busy dispensing shots of vodka to his friends. ‘Down the hatch,’ he commanded as he poured the alcohol straight from the bottle into Astrid’s open mouth. Kate had retired to bed, but William was in no hurry to join her. Arthur had a well-stocked bar and William was regaling his friends with tales of his latest adventure overseas over a pint of lager. He was in high spirits and still sporting a beard, much to Harry’s amusement. As midnight approached, Guy Pelly announced it was time for the first game. ‘You have to get into each other’s clothes for half an hour,’ he said, pointing at William and a female guest.