Days 312 and 313

Writing exercise – NaNoWriMo month, so start a novel – “The Fourth Son”

…

It was a clear night, and the stars were out, as well as they could be seen in the city from the roof of my apartment block.

I had wanted to go to Arizona or Montana, where stargazing would be so much better, but Cecily wanted to go on an Ocean Cruise with her parents and just didn’t come back.

That much I learned when I came home from work several weeks later, and every shred of evidence of her was gone.

It was, I guess, time to end what had become a stagnant relationship, but even so, it didn’t help to see the photos of her new boyfriend, a prince from one of those minor European Principalities, on Facebook and in the magazines.

She could have at the very least sent me a text.  I thought I was owed that much, and perhaps if she had known who I was, it might have been different.

Or not.

I shrugged, took another sip of cold beer, and stared up at the sky.  It was the early hours of the morning, and I had a telescope, a rather good one at that, and often came up to see if I could locate the planets whenever they were in range.

When they were not, a shooting star or a celestial body sufficed, and, failing that, sometimes it was just sitting on the roof, knocking back a six-pack was equally as preferable.

It was the way this night was going.

I heard rustling over by the exit and looked over.  The light wasn’t that distinct, but it wasn’t hard to pick out the shape of another roof visitor, though not the usual suspect.

“Ruth told me this is where you hide from the rest of humanity.”

Female, different voice.  Was this our infamous new apartment dweller?  Old Mary McGinty had passed on, her apartment remaining empty for months, unusually because of a shortage, until one Agatha Morell arrived very early one morning and moved in.

Ruth had been trying to find out who she was, with no success.  No one could because no one had seen her.  Except, it seems, by Agatha’s admission, Ruth.

“Ruth has a vivid imagination.”

“Ruth wishes you would use yours and read the signals.”  She came over, and we shook hands, or more likely touched hands.

I felt a tingling sensation.  The night air was charged with static electricity.  “Ruth and I are just friends.”

“So she tells me.  Home astronomer?”  She had seen the telescope.

“Would be an astronaut.”  I was feeling like being flippant, a trait Ruth sometimes frowned upon.

“Were you too old, too young, underqualified or overqualified?”

“I wish.  Let’s just say I’m thirsty.  Do you drink beer?”

“Of course.”  She took one out of the six-pack, removed the lid like an expert, and drank.

I picked up mine and did the same.

She flopped into the seat by the telescope.  I looked at the telescope, the sky, the new arrival, and sat beside her.

In that glance as I sat, I saw a woman in her mid-thirties, shortish hair coloured red or auburn, an expression that showed she smiled a lot, very fit, and, even in casual clothes, looked very, very attractive.  And unattached, maybe.  There were no rings.

A fitting rival for Ruth, whom I had once declared drop-dead gorgeous.  And the only person in the building who knew who I really was, other than Mary McGinty.

Yes, I got the signals Ruth was sending, and yes, I would have acted on them, but she would be eaten alive by the people who professed to care about me and who had other ideas about whom I should have a relationship with.  And if my identity was discovered, there would be the relentless and intrusive media who would make her life utter hell.

For a few brief moments after Cecily had gone, I thought my invisible handlers had gotten to her.  Or perhaps she met my mother; that would be enough to send anyone packing.

“So, hiding or not, what brings you to the roof?  She had another go at asking the same question.  She was either a politician or a journalist.

“The sky, the beer, a chance to meet inquisitive women.  Your excuse?”

“The sky, the beer, a chance to meet mysterious men.”  She smiled, and an instant shudder went through me.  My instinct was telling me this girl was trouble.

“I assure you I am far from mysterious.”

“Then that dream I had as a child, to be swept off my feet by a prince, is not about to come true?”

My heart rate just went into overdrive, trying to keep my best poker face in place and quell the rising panic.

“Unfortunately, no.”  It took a fraction of a second too long to get that panic inflection in my voice under control.

It elicited a quick and concerned glance from her

A deep breath and then, “I suspect, given the number of actual princes I don’t know of, I would imagine they do not go around sweeping damsels off their feet, except, of course, in Hallmark movies and Mills and Boon paperbacks.”

Her expression changed to one of surprise, perhaps something else.

“And you know this gem of information how?”

“My older sister, who often dreams about being swept off her feet by a prince, though admittedly it would be on the dance floor to a waltz.  She’s actually pretty good.”

A first attempt to deflect and switch subjects.

“Do you dance?”

“Waltz, yes, what that wriggling and uncoordinated swaying like drunken sailors represents, no.  My mother made all of us go to dancing lessons.  Do you?”

I would stick to the truth and improvise until I discovered what she was after.  I could, if I were worried, push the panic button, but that would cause no end of trouble for a great many people.

Perhaps on her part, it was just a poor choice of words.

“Finishing school in Lucerne, Switzerland.  My grandmother thought I needed the rough edges honed off before I returned to civilisation.  Ballroom dancing seemed to be a part of the finishing process.”

Finishing school.  Granddaughter, presumably of Mary McGinty, was more than just a possibility.  But, if it was a cover story, it was a good one.  I tried to remember if Mary had ever mentioned such a granddaughter, and on the fringe of my memory, I remembered her mentioning that her daughter had three children.

“I assume you are Mary’s granddaughter, Agatha, if I’m not mistaken.  You had this thing about red hair, even though it wasn’t, and spent some time working through the colours of the rainbow.  It seemed to vex her.”

Now, it was an interesting shade of auburn blended with black.

“I didn’t realise you were so well acquainted.”  She looked me up and down with more interest.

“She liked talking about you. I got the feeling she would like to have seen you more often.”

“She and mother had this thing, and we suffered as a result of the collateral damage.  Mother died about a month before Gran, leaving us precious little time to be reacquainted.  Then there was the inheritance, tedious and convoluted, with claims and counterclaims, as if we wanted anything to do with it.  We just wanted somewhere to live.”

“A nice place indeed.”

“The luck of the draw.  We could have ended up in a tenement on the Lower East Side.  I’m grateful, and I don’t intend to be or cause trouble.”

“Your sisters are with you?”

“Yes, Bethany and little Diana, though not exactly little any more.  It was the devil’s own job keeping them out of the foster system, but we’re together, and it’s going to stay that way.”

A woman of determination.

“Do you have a job?”

“Yes.  Managing my aunt’s business interests.  I had no idea she had so many fingers in so many pies, as she used to say.  It keeps me amused, along with being a surrogate mother.  This is my first night off, well, it’s not exactly a night off, just repurposing the early hours.”

She finished the bottle of beer, put the empty back in the six-pack, and stood.  “If you find any available princes, tell them I’m looking for one.  A dance partner or whatever. In a couple of weeks, the planets are lining up, so there’s no hurry.”  She smiled.  “Thanks for letting me ramble on.  It feels good to have someone I can talk to at last.”

Then, as quickly as she appeared, she disappeared.

Being as interested as I was in the solar system, and the fact that she had said the planets were going to line up, I checked, and she was right.

It was odd that she knew such random stuff, and since I didn’t believe in coincidences, whether she had interrogated Ruth about me.

Ruth was finally back from the other side of the country, and I went to meet her at the airport.  I did this sometimes to surprise her.

She was suitably surprised when she saw me leaning against a pillar, hands in pockets, surveying each passenger as they came out of the door into the terminal.  Ruth was almost last; a sign she had travelled coach.

She was frowning as she entered the terminal, but that changed to a smile when she saw me.  Like lovers who hadn’t seen each other for a long time, we kissed and hugged.

“I was hoping you’d come.”  The hug lasted longer than usual.  I suspect her business had not gone well.

“Either that or it was another starless night on the roof.”

“I’m glad I rate above astronomy.”

“You always rate above astronomy.  I take it you shunned the airline food?”

She made a face, the one that said, Don’t ask silly questions.

“Good. I have made a reservation at Luigi’s.”

She looked at me thoughtfully, then said, “Agatha.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ll tell you over wine and pasta.”

Luigi’s was a small, intimate restaurant, a favourite place for both Ruth and I.

It was the sort of place where one could propose to the love of their life, and it had happened three times when we had been dining there.

She had dropped hints more than once that it was just the sort of place she would like to be proposed to, and if I had been more romantically attached, it would be exactly the place I would use.

And in that moment, looking at her in the subdued lighting and the flickering candlelight, she had never looked so enchanting.  It made me wonder why I was so reticent.  As Agatha had said, the planets were lined up, and what other reason did I need?

I guess it was the fallout from making such a decision when so much was expected of me, one that would cause my parents’ consternation, though eventually there would be reluctant acceptance, but in that period between proposal and acceptance, they would have destroyed the romance and the very essence of a girl who simply wanted to be loved.

The truth is, love would not be enough.  Not being in the constant limelight, and the intrusion into every facet of her life.  I’d seen it happen to my next eldest brother, choosing a girl for love, and it had broken both of them.  It was why I was hiding, accepting anonymity for as long as possible.

And I knew it was not going to last much longer.  A recent Sunday magazine feature on my family and the country, celebrating 800 years of royal rule, had an early photo of me in a family portrait, but the resemblance between then and now was discernible, if someone was looking.

Ruth had seen it and had remarked on how adorable I was as a child.  I had no such recollection.  It was more like the youngest boy that I was the figurative punching bag for my elder brothers.

Enough staring into each other’s eyes and wishing everything could be different.

“Have you met Agatha?  Yes, of course you have.  She is what some would call a force of nature.”

“She invaded my astronomy space.”

“The roof belongs to everyone.”

I shook my head.  “I guess I had a good run.  I’ll have to find somewhere else to hide.”

“What did you think of her?”

“Trouble.  I think she knows who I am.”

She gave me one of those looks, the one that said I spent too much time worrying about what might happen rather than concentrating on what I should be doing.

“I didn’t tell her, and I doubt Mary ever would.  She knew the importance of keeping your identity a secret.”

“She may have seen the paper.  They might have had the decency to tell me what was about to happen, or perhaps it was part of the plan to get me to come home.  Did she ask about me?”

“You’re not exactly a presence that could be ignored, and she is of an age and availability that she would ask about you.  I simply told her you were the shy, retiring type who preferred to keep to yourself.  When she asked if we were, you know, I said I liked to think so.  She was interested.”

“Then I didn’t help my cause.”

She took both my hands in hers.  “You are going to have to decide what it is you want.  You can’t keep drifting.”

“Well, that might be decided for me.  My father is thinking of retiring, and the consequent reshuffle of responsibilities would mean I would have to return.”

“Forever?”

“No, but I would have to become a Prince, and that would mean the end of anonymity.  It would also mean, if I were to keep seeing you, the end of your life that you have now, and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“Is that why…”

“I saw what it did to my brother, Richard, and the girl he chose for love, and it destroyed them.  I don’t want that to happen to you.”

A strange expression took over her face, her eyes glistened, and a smile appeared.  I knew right in that moment she was everything I wanted, and that what I felt was like the earth moving.

“I can’t ask you to sacrifice your future or life for what could only be described as pure hell.  Aside from what would happen at home.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s not a matter of what I want.  It’s a matter of what is expected.”

“And yet you are here despite all that?”

An interesting point.  Against all their advice and reluctance, they had succumbed to my wishes.

“The fourth son has its advantages.”

Luigi hovered, refilled the glasses with champagne.  I hadn’t ordered it, but he must have sensed something.

“You are the perfect couple, you know.  Drink, talk, I will prepare the perfect meal.”

He gave a little bow, as he did to his favourite customers and then left us.

“We shall visit my parents, and if you survive that, then I will do what I should have done months ago.  If that is you’ll have me?”

“You had me the first time I met you.  Yes, yes and yes.”

It was a sublime moment.

Until….

I looked up and saw a rather tenacious-looking woman staring down at me.

“You’re that prince something or other that was in the paper.”

That was followed by camera flashes, and the moment I had dreaded had arrived.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025