Tonight

“Did you tell them?” said Frederick, on Thursday, on the wall, at ten to eight.

Theo got out his apple.

“Not yet,” he said.

Frederick looked at him.

“Mum was on nights,” said Theo. “She was asleep when I got in, and she was getting up when I was going to bed, and you can’t tell Mum things when she’s just got up, she’s not in English yet. She does the first hour in German. You have to wait till she’s had two coffees.” He bit the apple. “And Dad was on earlies. He was asleep by nine. He sleeps in the chair with the arms with the crossword on his chest and you’re not allowed to wake him, it’s a rule, Kate woke him once in 2019 and he’s still talking about it.” He chewed. “Tonight.”

“Tonight,” said Frederick.

“Tonight,” said Theo, firmly, and looked across the yard, and waved, and the finger came up off the cup.

---

He did not tell them on Thursday night.

“Kate had a thing,” said Theo, on Friday, on the wall. “With a girl at her school. On the phone. For two hours. In the bathroom, because it’s the only room with a lock. Mum was knocking on the door. Dad needed the toilet. It was a whole evening.” He got out his apple. “You can’t tell anybody anything when Kate’s got a thing. Nobody’s listening. Everybody’s just standing in the corridor looking at the bathroom door.”

“Theo.”

“Tonight,” said Theo.

“It’s Friday.”

“I know it’s Friday.”

“Then it’s the weekend. And then it’s Monday. And then it’s only six days.”

Theo turned the apple over and found the place he wanted.

“Six days is a lot,” he said, and bit.

---

On Sunday at four his father asked him in right of which Crown the Shipping Act of New Albion was assented to, which was the easiest question his father had asked him since the cheese, and he said New Albion, and his father said good, and then there was a pause on the line from London, and then his father said:

“You are elsewhere, Frederick.”

Frederick sat with the cream telephone against his ear.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is not a matter for apology. It is an observation.” The faint scratch of the pen. “You answered in two seconds. You usually take five, because you check whether it is a trick. This week you did not check.” A pause. “Where are you?”

Frederick looked at the card on his knee, which had his hypothetical Bill on it, which was about the Fisheries Acts and was not very good, because he had not been able to think about it all week.

He thought about saying Dunmore Street. Number forty. Flat sixteen. Four floors up over a bus depot, at a kitchen table he had never seen, where a boy had not yet told his mother and father anything at all.

“Waiting for somebody to say something,” he said.

There was a silence on the line from London.

“Ah,” said his father. “Yes. That is the worst place to be.” The chair in the study creaked. “I have been there a great deal. Generally in the company of a Prime Minister.” A pause. “It is not improved by being asked about it. So I shall not ask. What is your Bill?”

He read him the Bill. It was not very good. His father got it in four minutes and said, kindly, that it was not a Bill, Frederick, it was a wish, and that he should try again next week, when he was less elsewhere.

---

On Monday Dame M was on the stairs.

She was coming down the main stairs of the north wing at ten past seven as he was going down them with his bag, which did not usually happen, since at ten past seven she was usually in her office with the day; and she stopped on the half-landing, by the window, and waited for him, with the folder under her arm.

“Sir.”

“Good morning.”

“No reply has been received,” said Dame M, “from the Hartigans.”

He stood on the stair above her with his bag.

“To the card, sir,” said Dame M. “The Household’s card. Which Master Hartigan took home with him on Wednesday, I understand, along with yours.” She paused. “It says R.S.V.P. In most households, a card that says R.S.V.P. receives a reply within four or five days. In the Household’s experience, a card that says R.S.V.P. and has a crest on it receives a reply within two.” She looked at him. “It has been five.”

“He hasn’t told them yet,” said Frederick.

Dame M did not move.

She stood on the half-landing with the folder under her arm and the October light coming through the tall window behind her, grey and thin, and looked up at him, and he watched her take it in. He watched it go in slowly, all the parts of it, the way his father took in a Bill.

“He hasn’t told them, sir.”

“No.”

“About the half-birthday.”

“About anything,” said Frederick. “About me. They think I’m a boy at school with eleven pens.”

There was a pause on the stairs.

“Well,” said Dame M at last. “In fairness to them, sir, you are.”

She went on down the stairs, past him, at her ordinary pace, the pace of somebody crossing a deck; and at the bottom she stopped, without turning round, and said to the hall:

“The Inspector would like to know the make of the car.”

---

“What car?” said Theo, on the wall.

“The car you’re coming in. On Sunday. The Inspector would like to know the make. And the colour. And who’s driving.” Frederick looked at the apple Theo had given him, the small lopsided one with the leaf. “So the officer at the door knows which car to let across the forecourt.”

Theo looked at him.

“I don’t know what car I’m coming in.”

“Haven’t you got one?”

“We had one,” said Theo. “In Milwaukee. We sold it, to pay for the van, when we moved. So I’m not coming in a car. I don’t know what I’m coming in.” He bit his own apple. “I’ll find out. When I tell them.”

“Theo.”

“Tonight,” said Theo.

---

He did not tell them on Monday night, because there was a thing about the boiler, and Fred came, from the ground floor, with his van, and was there until nine.

He did not tell them on Tuesday night, because it was Kate’s turn to choose the television and Kate chose something about a hospital, and Mum shouted at the television for two hours about the hospital, because the doctors on it were doing everything wrong, and you could not tell Mum anything while she was shouting at a television about a hospital, she would not hear you, she would just say look at that, look at that, nobody would ever put a line in like that.

He did not tell them on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning, on the wall, he did not give a reason.

He sat there with the apple and did not bite it. He looked across the yard at the window of Mr Pavlik’s office and did not wave. In the window Castellanos looked at the yard, and at the bike racks, and at the wall, and at the boy on it who had not waved, and Frederick saw him, eighteen inches up, put down his coffee.

“Theo,” said Frederick.

“I know.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“I know it’s Thursday.”

“It’s Sunday on Sunday.”

“I know,” said Theo.

He said it louder than he said things. Not much. A little. Enough that Frederick looked at him, and saw that he was not looking at anything, not the apple, not the window, not the yard; he was looking at the tarmac between his trainers, at a crack in it with moss, and his face was doing something Frederick had not seen it do before, and did not have a heading for.

They sat on the wall.

The yard went on round them. Lucía was at the steps, talking to somebody with her hands. The three tall boys were by the doors. A bus went past the front gate, red and cream, the twenty-two, and stopped, and let people off, and went on.

“Is it because of me?” said Frederick.

He did not know he was going to say it until he had said it. And then he had said it, and it was in the air between them on the wall, where he had put it, and he could not take it back.

Theo looked up from the crack.

“What?”

“Is it because it’s me,” said Frederick. “Who you’d have to tell them about.” He looked at the depot apple in his hand. “Because if you tell them, I’m not a boy with eleven pens any more. I’m the other thing. And you’ve had seven weeks of me just being the boy.” He turned the apple over. “I’d understand. If that’s why. I’d mind. But I’d understand.”

Theo stared at him.

He stared at him for a long time, on the wall, with his apple in his hand and his mouth slightly open, as though Frederick had just told him something extraordinary about the weather; and then he shut his mouth, and looked at the apple, and looked back at Frederick, and said:

“Freddie. No.”

“Then why?”

Theo looked at the bus going away down the street.

“Because of them,” he said.

---

He told him on Friday. On the wall, at a quarter past three, after gym, in the cold, which had come in that week, a real cold, the first, so that the stone of the wall was like ice through your trousers and your breath came out white.

It was Halloween. Half the seventh grade had come to school in costumes, because Ellicott allowed costumes on Halloween so long as they were not frightening, in the view of Dr Brooks, who had defined frightening in a letter home in such detail that Lucía said it was the most frightening thing that had happened all term. Lucía was a witch. June was a traffic light, on principle, because she said a traffic light was the only costume that told people something useful. Grant was a tomato, and went red inside it, which nobody could tell. Devon Price had come as a ghost, in a sheet with holes, and stood behind people all day, which was, Theo said, the most Devon thing that had ever happened.

Theo was green.

He was in a green hooded top with the hood up and two large round white eyes stuck to the top of the hood, with black dots in them, and a pair of green gloves, and green trousers, and his face painted green, very badly, so that it came off on everything he touched; and Mr Ferrante, in third period, had looked at him for a long time across the room and said, in a voice of terrible restraint, and what are you, Hartigan?, and Theo had said, a lizard, sir, and Mr Ferrante had shut his eyes.

Frederick was not in a costume. He had not been allowed, or rather it had not occurred to anybody that he might want one, and so he had come in the grey trousers and the blue shirt and the navy jumper, as a boy in a jumper, and Theo had looked at him at ten to eight and said what are you, and he had said I don’t know, and Theo had looked at him a moment longer and said you’re a man who’s been told the price of something, and Frederick had laughed so much he had to sit down on the wall.

Now it was a quarter past three and the green was coming off Theo’s face in the cold and his breath was coming out white through it, and he was doing up a shoelace that did not need doing up, with green gloves on, which made it very difficult.

“It’s not you,” he said, to the shoelace. “It’s them.”

Frederick waited.

“If I tell them on Monday,” said Theo, “they’ve got six days. And they’ll use them. All six.” He pulled the lace. “Mum’ll want to buy me new clothes. She’ll go to the shops on Canal Street on her day off and look at shirts we can’t afford and hold them up against me in the shop and say it’s not every day, and buy one, and then she won’t have it for the electric. And Dad’ll worry. He won’t say anything. He’ll just go quiet and do the crossword in pen and get it wrong, which he never does, and he’ll lie awake, I’ll hear him, the wall’s thin, and he’ll get up at three and make tea.” He pulled the other lace. “And Kate’ll tell her school. Everybody. By Tuesday. And they’ll tell their mums. And by Thursday the whole block’ll know, and Mrs Okonjo will come up with a cake, and Mr Dabrowski will want to know, and the man with the trees, and the depot.” He stopped. “And by Sunday it won’t be a birthday. It’ll be a thing. A great big thing that everybody’s been making for six days.” He looked up. “And you said. On the wall. About June’s. If you went anywhere it’d turn into yours. It’d stop being June’s party and be the Prince’s party at June’s.” He looked at Frederick through the green. “Well, if I tell them on Monday, it stops being yours. It turns into the Hartigans Going to the Palace.”

Frederick looked at him.

He had not thought of that. He had not thought of it at all. He had thought about it from every side but that one: from the Household’s, and the Inspector’s, and the card’s; from Dame M’s, on the stairs; from his own, at the end of the Axis, waiting. He had not once thought about it from four floors up over a bus depot, from a kitchen table where a woman would hold up a shirt she could not afford and say it’s not every day.

“So,” said Theo. “Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“Tomorrow. At supper.” Theo stood up off the wall. The green was all down his neck. “In passing. Like it’s nothing. I’ve been asked to a birthday. Tomorrow. I’ll need a lift.” He held up a green glove. “And then there’s no time. Not for shirts, because the shops are shut. Not for Kate to tell her school, because it’s Saturday night and there’s no school. Not for Dad to lie awake six nights, only one. Not for the block, because it’s already happening.” He spread his hands. “No time for anybody to make a thing of it. It’s just a birthday. Tomorrow. And I need a lift.”

“And if they say no?”

“They won’t say no.” Theo picked up his bag. “Mum’ll say yes before she knows what she’s saying yes to. That’s the whole point. That’s why it’s got to be in passing. If I sit them down and say Mum, Dad, I’ve got something to tell you, they’ll think I’ve done something, and they’ll be listening, properly, and they’ll have time to think. If I say it while I’m putting the forks out, Mum’ll say yes, all right, whose? before she’s even looked up, because that’s what she always says, and then she’s said yes.” He put his bag on his shoulder. “And Mum doesn’t take back a yes. Ever. It’s a rule.”

Frederick sat on the wall in the cold and looked up at him: a lizard, with large round white eyes on top of its hood, with green coming off its face in streaks, with a plan.

“That,” he said slowly, “is the cleverest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know,” said Theo. “I’ve been working on it since Wednesday.”

“Wednesday last week?”

“Wednesday last week,” said Theo, and the bell went, and he turned towards the front gate and the buses, and stopped, and turned back.

“Tell your lady,” he said. “The one with the folder. Tell her not to worry. Tell her I’ll be there at two.” He considered. “Probably. In something. I don’t know what yet.”

---

At six on Friday Dame M came to the north wing sitting room with the folder, as she came every Friday at six, and sat in the chair across from him by the fireplace, which was lit now, because it was the end of October, with her hand flat on it, closed.

“Monday, sir,” she said. “School. Tuesday, your mother collects. Wednesday, Miss Hellström. Thursday, the first Thursday.” She paused. “Friday, Mr Lorimer.”

“Yes.”

“And Sunday,” said Dame M.

She did not say anything else. She sat by the fire with her hand on the folder and looked at him, and waited, and he understood that she was not going to ask, because asking would give it a supervisor; she was going to sit there and wait until he told her, for as long as it took, the way the Inspector had sat in Mr Pavlik’s chair for forty minutes looking out of the window.

“He’s telling them tomorrow,” said Frederick.

Dame M did not move.

“Tomorrow, sir.”

“At supper. On Saturday.” He looked at the fire. “In passing. While he’s putting the forks out. So that there isn’t any time for anybody to make a thing of it.” He looked back at her. “His mum would buy him a shirt she couldn’t afford. And his dad would lie awake. And his sister would tell her whole school. And by Sunday it wouldn’t be my birthday any more, it’d be the Hartigans Going to the Palace.” He paused. “So he’s going to say it tomorrow night, and they won’t have time.”

Dame M sat by the fire for a long time.

She sat so long that the clock in the corner that had belonged to somebody’s grandmother ticked round a full minute, and a log settled in the grate, and somewhere below them in the Palace a door shut. Her face did nothing. Her hand was flat on the folder. He watched her take it all in, every part, in order: the shirt, and the father, and the sister, and the forks.

Then she took the pen out of the pocket of her jacket, and, without opening the folder, wrote something on the outside of it, on the cover, in the corner, very small, under whatever she had written there in September, where he could not read it upside down.

“What did you write?” said Frederick.

Dame M looked at the cover of the folder.

“I wrote, sir,” she said, “Guest’s parents to be informed by guest, Saturday evening, in passing, while laying the table. Car unknown. Driver unknown. Arrival two o’clock, probably.” She put the pen away. “And underneath, This is the most ordinary arrangement the Household has ever been asked to make.”

She stood up.

“The Inspector,” she said, “will not like it.”

“No.”

“I shall tell him in the morning.” She went to the door. “He will sit very still for some time, and then he will ask for the make of the car again, and I shall tell him that it is not known, and he will sit very still again.” She stopped at the door, with her hand on it, without turning round. “And then, sir, if I know the Inspector, he will ask for the name of the boy’s street, and the number of the block, and whether there is anywhere on Dunmore Street to park, and he will send a man in plain clothes to stand at the end of it tomorrow evening at about half past six, in the cold, to see what comes out of the garages.”

“Will he?”

“He would be failing in his duty if he did not,” said Dame M. “And he is a very good Inspector.” She opened the door. “Good night, sir. I hope Master Hartigan’s forks go well.”

“Dame Margaret.”

She stopped.

“Is it all right?” said Frederick. “That he hasn’t told them? That they don’t know?”

Dame M stood in the doorway of the north wing sitting room with her back to him and the folder under her arm and the light from the corridor on her grey hair, and did not answer for a moment.

“Sir,” she said. “Your mother did not tell anybody about your father for most of a year. Your father did not tell anybody about his half-birthday for seventy. And I did not tell my mother I had joined the Navy until I had been in it for three weeks, and she found out from a neighbour, who had seen me in uniform at the station.” She turned her head, slightly, not all the way. “Nobody in this house is in a position to criticise Master Hartigan’s timing.”

She went out, and shut the door behind her very quietly, and Frederick sat by the fire in the north wing sitting room and listened to her go along the corridor at the pace of somebody crossing a deck; and thought about a table four floors up over a bus depot, where tomorrow at about half past six a boy would put out the forks, and say something in passing, and a woman at a stove with a tea towel over her shoulder would say yes, all right, whose? before she had even looked up.

He hoped very much that she would. He found that he had never hoped for anything so much in his life, and that he could not do a single thing about it, and that this was, he supposed, what Theo meant by a lift.