The Line of Succession

by Harry F Rey

  “James, please! I’m sorry. Let’s figure this out.”

  “There’s nothing to figure out. This is why I told you last year to leave it alone. Unless…” James looked at Andrew in a new light. “Unless this is your way of leaving?” At first the thought had been too insane to comprehend. Sitting in his mother’s conservatory that morning, feeling his stomach sink between his legs, his thoughts had flocked to that darkest place. Andrew had got sick of him. Sick of hiding, fed up with the closeted life, done with the half-relationship James had forced him to endure while everyone else in the world walked hand-in-hand down the aisle.

  “No, James. No.” Andrew moved to grab his arm, but James moved it away.

  “Makes sense, really. You’re dumping me and salting the earth by dropping me into the middle of this fucked up Disney romance, so no one else can ever have me.” The darkest thoughts crept back. The fear he’d pushed from his mind, dulled with carnivorous pleasures of their life together, now broadcast on the evening news.

  “No, no, no! James it’s not true. I love you, please!” The words landed empty on James’ ears. The performance was a spirited one, but one ever so slightly lacking in authenticity. The line put in the play merely to rouse a laugh from the audience. The actor knew the critic was watching…

  “You’ve ruined it.”

  Andrew dropped to his knees on the bathroom floor, his hands clasped up in the air, tears rolling down his face. James looked down at him for a moment. They’d had some big fights before, and had even been through a few faux breakups over their fifteen years together, but those had never lasted more than a day. This felt different. Unlike an argument after too many drinks, this damage felt permanent. James had loved that every moment with Andrew felt like a moment outside the world of royalty, as if he led his own life and could claim to be master of his own fate, captain of his own soul. His secret life with Andrew the real one; the public life was fake. Now, those two worlds had collided, and things could never be the same again.

  James moved past Andrew, still begging on his knees, towards the door. “James, please! I love you.”

  “No, you don’t.” James replied, his hand on the door handle. “You love what I am.” Then he left, as Andrew slid fully onto the floor in a pool of his own tears. A pool of his own making.

  Frank nodded at James as he closed the bathroom door behind him. He breathed in deeply with a creeping fear Andrew might burst through the door in fiery rage. James shook his head to himself. Beneath the anger, beneath the tears, was only fear. From the unsettling terror of his grandmother’s cold eyes to the poison words of his sister, and now the sickly-sweet smile of his bride to be in name only. The walls were truly closing in.

  Truthfully, it didn’t matter what Andrew said or did anymore. The match had been struck. Their old life lay in tatters on a bathroom floor. His heart fluttered, and he breathed out a trembling sigh. Another more entrenched fear now threatened his composure … that of confronting the honest truth of his heart. But he could only fight one battle at a time. This day had already come with enough heartache.

  “Are you ready, Your Royal Highness?” Frank asked, trying to hide his concern behind a steely sheen of professionalism.

  James looked at the bathroom door handle one more time, his hand still clasped around the metal, holding his mind still. Inside his head, a hellish symphony boomed and droned a thundering beat. He let the silent noise wash over his mind, surrendering himself to the memories he liked to get lost in … him sandwiched between curves of an unknown man on his back like the lines of an angel dressed in cocaine white. How he wished things could be that simple again.

  James sniffed and wiped away a single tear. Those memories wouldn’t work, because every single one contained Andrew’s touch … before, after, and always. That fear crept up his throat again like a parasite trying to break free, but he gritted his teeth against it and steeled his fists by his side. If only Andrew could burst out that door, take James by the hand and pull him into the night. He paused for one more moment, studying the wood like it was the tomb of an unknown soldier.

  “I am.”

  James turned his back on the unopened door. The two of them walked down the corridor, back to the confines of the royal box, in silence.

  • • •

  The spring night air had turned cool. Where, only an hour before, crowds had cheered and journalists yelled, now men in high-visibility jackets cleaned up the last of the debris. Andrew stepped out of the building just as two men finished rolling up the red carpet.

  “Out the way, mate,” one said, pushing him aside. Andrew ripped off his bowtie and wrapped himself up in his jacket, both to keep out the wind and to try to look like he hadn’t just rushed out of a formal affair.

  Craving some air and time to think, he set off for the tube station and turned onto the busier Exhibition Road. Taxis zoomed past Imperial College on the right, their lights reflecting off its glass and steel exterior. The ultra-modern facade of the university stood in stark contrast to the grand colonnade townhouses on his left. Students in groups of three or four mingled around the street, even at this hour of the evening. Andrew wondered for a moment. Night school … studying something … having a career or even a life outside the palace, outside James … the enticing anonymity of London … it could all be possible. After all, these people did it.

  He crossed Cromwell Road, nearly at South Kensington tube station. His eye looked for the sign. Two men walked towards him. They were laughing at some joke only they shared. One had his arm over the other's shoulder. They looked the same age as him, this couple, going out somewhere or coming home, not caring who else would see them together, not interested in other people's opinions. Andrew walked down the middle of the pavement, so the couple separated as they approached him. The one who’d had his arm around his lover's shoulder kept his eye on Andrew as they passed. Their faces locked into each other for just a precious moment. Andrew’s head turned back as momentum carried this stranger forward, away from him and back to his lovers’ arms.

  Andrew looked back, just to take in their happiness. The man glanced back as well and gave Andrew a wink. How fragile was the love between two men…. How dependent on the airs and graces of history, and determined by the cruel reality of geography…. So what if he lived in twenty-first century Britain, where marriage and family were realistic, even expected, life goals for someone like him? Gay, that’s what we are. James and I are nothing but a couple of closeted gays, hiding from the world. He might as well be a subject of Faisal’s father, for all the good it did him. Life as consort to a king felt no different than life in a dungeon … just with nicer walls.

  He felt like screaming, like dragging these two poor guys in front of James and yelling Look. Look at these two. It’s this simple. Stop being so afraid. But instead, he turned and walked even quicker towards the tube, wiping away a tear.

  He remembered the few occasions they’d gone to Buckingham Palace alone together, when the Queen would insist on taking tea with them in one particular room adorned with a stunning portrait of Edward the second. In the corner facing it hung a smaller painting of a young man, equally as handsome.

  “That painting over there is Piers Gaveston,” the Queen had explained to them over blueberry scones one afternoon, many years ago. “He was the lover of Edward the second, my ancient ancestor, and got rather too big for his boots. Thought he could run the show, act like he was second in command.” Andrew and James glanced at each other as they sipped their tea. “Shame what happened to him, really. Impaled on the swords of two Welshman.” The Queen picked up a knife and stabbed it through a scone, sawing it in half. “And the poor King, buggered to death with a hot poker.” She handed each of them one crumbling half.

  “Granny,” James said, “that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. We’re not living in the dark ages.”

  “Perhaps not,” she responded to James while staring straight at Andrew, “but some things never change.�
�

  By the time Andrew got back to the flat he still hadn’t decided whether to get drunk or high, but he’d resolved to get his head far, far away. His key opened the door and he stepped into the familiar darkness. Right now, it felt like a refuge. He dropped his tuxedo jacket and pulled off his shoes all at once. In fact, he took everything off, right down to his boxers, and went straight for the top cupboard in the kitchen where the best part of a bottle of a twenty-one-year-old Balvenie still sat.

  He padded around the small flat, taking gulps of whisky — neat — and turning everything over in his mind. He walked into the bedroom, bare and clean. The bed was freshly made up with chestnut color sheets. Andrew stood in the doorway, staring at the bed and finishing the glass. The things we’ve done here.

  Maybe that’s our problem. Too much sex — unnatural sex. Andrew tried to think about the last time the two of them had been together, just them, without stimulants or special guests. He couldn’t remember, and it made him sadder than he thought possible. He started to recall … last year, alone on a yacht docked in Monte Carlo … they’d made love like the teenagers they used to be, and it had been such a disappointment. Guess it’s my fault as much as his…

  He went back into the kitchen and poured another, fuller, glass. He didn’t want the television on … didn’t want to check his phone. Maybe he would go back out into the night. Free and alone, he mind some anonymous hook-up and fuck away all his troubles.

  But he found himself back on the bed again, sitting on the edge. He placed the glass on the bedside table, next to the one framed photo of the two of them that had been there for years. He remembered the moment perfectly…. Singapore, when they’d been all of twenty-two. They were sitting on a stone wall in a jungle resort, two trees intertwined in a heart shape behind them, each holding a baby monkey and grinning broadly. Andrew stared at it, wondering how he felt. Was this now a picture of an ex? A memento from a time so far back in the past he might as well be remembering a movie? Or, was it a reminder of all they had shared in life, of their shared life, intertwined like the trees, for good or for bad, forever?

  He knew it would be a mistake, but he opened the bottom drawer of the bedside table, pulled out a shoebox and placed it on the bed beside him. The only light came from the kitchen, but it was just enough. With the glass in one hand, he took off the lid with the other and started to root through the mound of Polaroid pictures, postcards, foreign money, and little handwritten notes from their life together.

  He dug to the bottom and felt around the edges of the Polaroids. Not that one … not that one either. This one. He pulled out the picture with the frayed edges and placed it on his lap. He drained the whisky, then flopped onto the bed, holding the photo up to his face. Andrew remembered everything about this picture. He’d just been given a Polaroid camera for his sixteenth birthday, and the first thing the two of them did was to take it on a walk in the fields around Eton.

  “Let’s take a picture of us,” James said, standing on top of the hill that overlooked the school.

  “Are you sure?” Andrew asked, also making it to the top. He’d been a bit behind the whole way, stopping all the time to look at the view through the camera. “What if someone sees the picture?”

  “Who will see? We’ll keep them for us. You’ll keep them all.”

  “Okay,” Andrew said, smiling at him. “Let’s do it.”

  They turned so the school was behind them. James put his arm around Andrew’s waist and pulled him in close, while Andrew held the camera in front of them. He hoped it would catch them and they wouldn’t end up wasting too much film.

  “One … two…”

  James kissed him on the cheek just as Andrew’s finger hit the button. Andrew shook the picture hard while they waited for the picture to print,

  “Let me see?” James asked. Andrew had held the camera a bit too close … part of his head and shoulders were cut off. But his smile was there, soft and happy, with James’ lips planted on his cheek.

  “Perfect.” James said.

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  “Andrew.”

  “Yeah?

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too, James. I always will.”

  Holding tight onto the picture, tears streaming down his face, Andrew marched into the kitchen and grabbed his phone.

  Chapter Nine

  Bill preferred to read the first edition of the Gazette by the light of his computer screen. It reminded him he had to go home at some point. In years gone by, Elena would have called him around this time, after she’d seen the front page on the news, and would ask him if there was anything more he could do that night. Of course, the answer would always be no. Bill would be back by eleven, kiss his sleeping son, and enjoy the rest of the night with his wife.

  That had been years ago.

  He turned to page four and five, plastered with pictures of the new princess Katyn. The People’s Princess … one of Roger’s better headline ideas. A subheading reported that every Topshop in the country had already sold out of Katyn’s dress, even though she’d worn it just hours ago. He had to admit it was a masterstroke by the royals. People endured their Queen, Victoria II. She’d never inspired love … not since the death of her only son, anyway. For some reason people blamed her, quietly at least, for his death. Conspiracy theories abounded that the Prince wasn’t actually dead, but had in fact run off to some island with his secretary. Rumors of their affair had swirled in the year before their death, causing a whispered storm that the heir to the throne might leave his wife for a Catholic redhead from Belfast. Their marriage would have been forbidden by law. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if it wasn’t in fact true.

  Bill remembered, with perfect clarity, each moment of the night Richard died. He’d been deputy editor back then. The headline should have been something about speed cameras. … a nonsense story that was kept on file to fill in the days when nothing particularly interesting happened. For some reason, the BBC arrived at the scene of the crash very quickly and broke the news. In a state of shock, Bill had rooted through the filing cabinet to find the pre-written obituary for Prince Richard that he’d thought he would never have to use.

  Not long after, the hospital paged him. That night he wrote the front-page story with a pen and paper from his wife’s hospital room as she slept. The night duty nurse faxed a copy to the newsroom for him. When Elena woke the next morning, Bill told her he had a front-page story that day. He remembered everything about her face as she smiled at him. Her dimpled cheeks, the tube inside her nose, the woolly hat she wore to cover up her bald head … she’d been so proud.

  Bill’s mobile rang, breaking him out of the memories that really served no purpose these days but to bring him down.

  “Hi, son. Sorry, I know it’s late.”

  “It’s alright, Dad.” Bill could hear the cutting disappointment of his son through the phone. He might be nineteen and with a life of his own, but he still wanted his dad home at night. “I saw your front page on the news. That girl is hot.”

  Bill chuckled, but it brought a pang of sadness, too, that Elena wouldn’t get to see the bright young lad she’d raised. He took after her so much, even so far as calling him when the news flashed up the next day’s front page; a gentle reminder that the day was done, and he could come home. It kept him honest, he always felt … something rare in the tabloids. He’d never print something he wouldn’t want his son calling him up about. He still read every word as if Elena herself was reading it back to him aloud.

  “Yup, she is beautiful.” He smoothed the pages of tomorrow’s paper out in front of him, making sure they’d cut out the paragraph that’d questioned if Prince James wasn’t in fact 100% straight. He’d erupted in fury at the journalist who’d dropped that line in. It was far too early in the game for accusations like that. The lack of public evidence of a girlfriend was not a case for a closeted prince, especially not this prince. Even hinting at such an idea
would piss a lot of people off and could easily erupt in a wave of royalist sympathy. The Brits were nothing if not fickle, and Bill knew full well his paper, like all institutions, only survived with the consent of the public.

  “If you’re not coming home soon I might go out.”

  The words made Bill stop reading the paper and pay attention. He looked at his watch … a quarter to eleven. He didn’t want to think about what his kid might be up to at this time of night.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?”

  “I’d just go to a friend’s, Dad. It’s not like I’m going out to get hammered.”

  “Which friend?” Bill glanced up as his office door opened. He beckoned Roger to come in and sit down.

  “I don’t know … maybe Jonesy or Dan.” Bill relaxed as he recognized both of those names as lads from college. But still, he wanted to see his son at least once in this week.

  “Look, I’ll be home in half an hour. Just stay in tonight, son. There’s still Chinese in the fridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’ll be home soon, I promise. Okay?”

  “Fine.” There was a sigh down the line, but it made Bill feel like a little bit less of a crap parent.

  “Love you, Greg.”

  “Love you too, Dad.”

  Bill placed the phone down and closed the paper, holding up the headline. “Princess Bombshell. Nice work,” he said to Roger. The headline ran across a full-page picture of James and Katyn together on the red carpet, waving at the crowd.

  “You moved the bit about Alexandra inside?” Roger asked, sitting across the desk. Bill nodded, opened the paper and read:

  “Princess Alexandra turns birthday bash political with Syria action call. Campaigners have praised the princess’ unusual intervention in the Syrian civil war, echoing her call for a renewed political solution to the conflict. Blah, blah, blah.” Bill closed the paper again and sat back in his chair. “What’s her game here?”