William and Harry (28 page)

Under a moon so bright it cast their shadows across the beach, William assured Kate she was the one. For the first time they discussed quite seriously the subject of marriage. William, who had inherited something of his father’s fear of commitment, knew he would lose Kate if he could not give her some form of guarantee. ‘They didn’t agree to get married there and then; what
they made was a pact,’ a member of their inner circle explained. ‘William told Kate she was the one, but he was not ready to get married. He promised her his commitment and said he would not let her down, and she in turn agreed to wait for him.’ The problem was William had his career to think about, and while Kate needed reassurance, he also needed to know that she understood everything that came with marrying him. He would always have to put duty first. She loved him, that he knew, but being a royal meant making sacrifices. William was due to spend six months on attachments with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, but that was all to come. For now they were together.

The pact they made that night in Desroches would stand them in good stead. While Harry’s career hung in limbo following his return from Afghanistan, William’s had been meticulously planned. In September he graduated to troop commander and was now qualified to be deployed to a war zone. He was stationed with D Squadron of the Household Cavalry at Combermere Barracks in Windsor, where he led a troop of twelve men – himself plus a sergeant, two corporals and eight troopers – and was shaping up as quite the royal soldier – or ‘combat wombat’, as his father affectionately called him. But regardless of how good a soldier he was, William knew he would never fight like Harry, although he had made his intention to go to war clear before he joined Sandhurst:

It was a topic he revisited when he was interviewed by NBC presenter Matt Lauer ahead of the Concert for Diana. When asked about his future career in the armed forces he said, ‘What’s the point of me doing all my training and being there for my guys when I can turn around to somebody and say, “Well I’m far too important, I’m not going”?’

But William had been advised that he would never be sent to the front line, and when his squadron was deployed to Afghanistan for six months, William was left behind. He found it as difficult as Harry had, but Lieutenant Wales put on a brave face. It was, he said ‘for good reasons I was not able to deploy to Afghanistan’. He couldn’t wait for the New Year, when he would join the Royal Air Force. Ever since he was a little boy, when he and Harry had been allowed to sit in the cockpit of their father’s helicopter, William had wanted to fly.

It was freezing cold when he arrived at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire on 7 January 2008. William had just returned from a New Year break at Balmoral with Kate, and neither of them knew how long it would be until they were together again. The air force college, which is the oldest in the world, was a bit like Sandhurst – impressive from the outside and practical on the inside. The base comprises its own runway, educational facilities, gym, swimming pool and halls of residence including York House, the Grade II listed building where William was to
live. This had been named after his great-grandfather Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI), who was appointed to command a squadron at Cranwell in 1918. His room, which measured fifteen feet square, was sparsely furnished with a single bed, a fitted wardrobe and a small en-suite bathroom. It was five miles to Sleaford, the nearest town, and a short walk to Cranwell village. All around was the green Lincolnshire countryside.

William’s working day started at 8 a.m. and finished at 5.30, when he was free to do as he chose. His father, who had learned to fly at the same base, had warned William there would be little time for socialising. Charles had trained on a Mark 3 Provost and graduated as a flight lieutenant on 20 August 1971. William couldn’t resist a smile as he walked past his father’s portrait, which hung in College Hall to the left of the Rotunda, on his way to class. His father had been right – the lessons were hard – and William spent every free hour studying and getting to grips with the cardboard cut-out flight deck presented to every officer cadet for training purposes. Unlike most cadets, who train for a minimum of three years before becoming an operational pilot, a fast-track course had been specially prepared for the future king. ‘We’ve adapted his course and cut out anything superfluous because we’re not teaching him to be an operational pilot; we’re teaching him to be a competent pilot,’ said Squadron Leader Kevin Marsh, who oversaw William’s attachment.

William had been concerned that he would never realise his childhood dream of learning to fly. Flying in the RAF depends on perfect vision, and William is short-sighted. It could have been a problem, but because he was already a serving officer in
the Household Cavalry, he was accepted into the RAF. Like everyone else, he attended the Officers and Aircrew Selection Centre and a medical board prior to his attachment, and he was ordered to wear prescription glasses. ‘William wasn’t allowed to wear his own spectacles,’ said a senior officer. ‘He had to wear MoD-prescribed glasses, which weren’t very attractive.’ They did the job, however, and within a fortnight he took to the skies for the first time.

As he took the controls of the Grob 115E William took a deep breath and carried out the final checks. He had been trained by Squadron Leader Roger Bousefield, who had approved his solo flight on the small propeller-driven aircraft, which is used for elementary flying training by the RAF. ‘God knows how somebody trusted me with an aircraft and my own life,’ he joked when he was safely back on the tarmac. After completing his elementary training in the Grob, William was sent to RAF Linton in Yorkshire, a two-hour drive from Cranwell. Here he learned to fly the Tucano, a more advanced aircraft. As he had expected, there was little time for Kate, who fitted around his working week, and in March they managed to jet off to Klosters for a week’s skiing. The intensity of his tailored fast-track course had its advantages: though Kate got to see little of her boyfriend, there was no repeat of his antics at Bovington, where William would go out for late-night drinking sessions with his platoon. Because of the ‘bottle to throttle’ rule, which means pilots can’t drink alcohol for ten hours prior to any flying duties, there was no bad behaviour at Cranwell, and William limited himself to two pints a day and on some days didn’t touch alcohol at all. Occasionally on Thursday nights he and his fellow flying
officers would allow themselves an early drink at the nearby Duke of Wellington pub followed by a fish-and-chip supper.

Most weekends he would head home to see Kate. She didn’t much fancy the long drive from London to Cranwell, and besides William’s mess offered little privacy. When he was half an hour from central London William would call her from his mobile to let her know he was almost home. Kate, who was freely waved in and out of the cast-iron gates of Clarence House had already drawn a hot bath and dinner was in the oven. ‘She was almost motherly to him,’ one of their friends recalls. ‘William would be exhausted when he got back, and after dinner they’d watch a movie together and he’d often fall asleep before the end of it.’ Sometimes they entertained at Clarence House, where William and Harry have private quarters. Kate had spent several weeks overseeing a minor refurbishment and had selected fashionable designer wallpaper from Osbourne & Little on the King’s Road and encouraged the boys to invest in a cycling machine for a makeshift gym, which they set up in one of the spare rooms.

At weekends they enjoyed cooking traditional English suppers like bangers and mash. Kate would grill the sausages while William mashed the potatoes under strict instructions not to use too much butter. If Harry was around, he was usually on drinks duty. It was the closest William and Kate had come to domestic bliss since their university days, and their friends noted how happy and comfortable they were in each other’s company. As Kate darted around the kitchen searching for utensils, William would give her a kiss when he thought no one was looking. He had developed the habit of finishing his girlfriend’s sentences, while she had learned to read him better than anyone else. She
could tell when he wanted their guests to leave and when to get out the Jack Daniel’s because William was in the mood to party. When Harry was home from Windsor they would entertain late into the night.

Their father and grandparents had told them to steer clear of the glitzy nightclubs they loved in London. Harry had been the recipient of numerous death threats posted on Al-Qaeda websites following his return from Afghanistan, and William had been warned to stay away from Boujis. When he and Kate went to the club in October 2007 chaos broke out as they tried to leave. It was the first time they had been seen together in public since their split, and as they left a scuffle broke out among the waiting photographers, who had gathered on the corner of Thurloe Street. There must have been fifty paparazzi hovering outside the club and everyone wanted a picture. Kate was nearly hit by a camera as she clambered into the waiting Range Rover, while a scowling and worse-for-wear William, accompanied by his protection officer, battled through the crush. ‘Come on, guys. Let us get in the car,’ the prince shouted. One photographer, who had grabbed the car’s left-hand wing mirror, was still attached to the Range Rover as it sped off, while some of the others followed the royal party on bikes. William was furious. The fact that the inquest into the death of his mother was still taking place made the harassment particularly upsetting.

When photographs of the couple were published on the front page of the
Evening Standard
under the headline B
OUJIS
N
IGHTS
A
RE
B
ACK
A
GAIN
an aide at Clarence House made a formal complaint. They described the press pack’s behaviour as ‘incomprehensible’ given the coroner was addressing the issue of
paparazzi intrusion the night Diana died in Paris that very week. It was a dangerous incident and exposed just how vulnerable the princes were when they went out. The Queen was not impressed. Not for the first time she questioned why her grandsons and their girlfriends were so intent on visiting such high-profile establishments. ‘The Queen cannot understand why her grandchildren go to places where they will be photographed and attract attention,’ I was told by a family friend. ‘Philip has told William and Harry to stay away from Boujis for a bit.’

A celebration was definitely in order, however, when William qualified as an RAF pilot on Friday 11 April 2008. He had telephoned his grandmother with the good news before calling Harry to announce that he had a plan to get to the Isle of Wight that weekend for their cousin Peter Phillips’ stag party. Like his father, grandfather Prince Philip and great-grandfather George VI, William was getting his wings. It had been decided that the ceremony would take place at RAF Cranwell because it could accommodate the press, who were just as interested in Kate, who would be there for the ceremony. As Air Chief Marshall the Prince of Wales pinned the RAF’s prestigious flying badge onto his son’s pristine uniform, he smiled broadly before shaking his hand. In 1971, when Charles had graduated, the Duke of Edinburgh had done the very same thing. Dressed in a military-style cream coat and her trademark black knee-high boots, Kate sat in the audience with William’s private secretary Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton and the Duchess of Cornwall. Two years earlier she had watched William pass out at Sandhurst; now he was Flying Officer Wales, and it was only a matter of hours before he would put his new aviation skills to the test.

After completing security at RAF Cranwell, William took the controls of the Chinook. He was heading for a civilian airfield on the Isle of Wight, and the two-hour sortie had been approved by senior flying officers. The rain that morning had cleared and conditions were perfect for the low-level flight south to London. As he steered to the east of the capital through busy civilian airspace, his first landing spot came into view. It had already been cleared for William to land at Woolwich Barracks in southeast London, where Prince Harry was waiting for him. It took an hour for William to fly Harry across the south of England. Below they could see the rush-hour traffic choking up the motorways. At 4 p.m. precisely they touched down at Bembridge Airport on the Isle of Wight, which meant they had plenty of time at the bar. If they had driven, they would still be north of London.

It was quite a story to tell their twenty-nine-year-old cousin and his friends and quite a story for the press. R
OYAL
S
TAG
S
ENSATION
was the
Sun
’s front page, while the
Mirror
led on F
URY
O
VER
W
ILLS
’ S
TAG
P
ARTY
J
AUNT
. A bitter row was quickly escalating over the cost of the flight. Although the trip had been cleared by the RAF, which described it as a ‘legitimate training sortie which tested his new skills’, a number of MPs demanded to know why the prince had been allowed to use the £10 million RAF helicopter as his personal transport when there was a shortage in Afghanistan. As far as they were concerned, the flight, which cost £15,000 in fuel, maintenance and manpower, benefited no one other than William and Harry, who had made the journey to the Isle of Wight in record time simply for a party. ‘This is serious kit with serious running costs,’ said the Liberal
Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey. ‘The public will not appreciate it being used as a stag-do taxi service.’