The Timings

The timings came up at breakfast on Saturday, on the salver, with Dacre, and they were two pages long.

His mother was at breakfast, which she was on Saturdays, in the small dining room of the north wing, at the end of the long table nearest the fire, with the newspapers in Swedish and in English and her coffee, and Frederick was opposite her with an egg, because on Saturdays Bridget sent the egg up rather than having him down, on the grounds, she said, that a boy should see his mother at breakfast once a week whether he liked it or not. Dacre came in with the salver and stood at his mother’s elbow, and his mother looked at the salver, and at the two pages on it, stapled, and took them, and put on her reading glasses.

“Timings,” she read, at the top, in English. “Sunday 2nd November 2025. North Wing. Not a programme.”

She looked up at Dacre.

“It says not a programme, ma’am,” said Dacre, with his very large hands folded in front of him. “At the top. Dame Margaret wrote that herself. In pen. After it was typed.” He looked at the floor. “She said you’d want to know it wasn’t.”

His mother looked at the pages for some time. Then she began to read, out loud, in English, in her careful voice, the one that had too much on it.

“13.50. Sergeant Castellanos to the north wing door.

“13.55. The Inspector’s officer to the edge of the forecourt, at the north end, to indicate to the guest’s vehicle where it should stop. The officer will not be in uniform and will not wave. The officer will point. Footnote one.”

She turned the page over to find footnote one.

“Footnote one. The make and colour of the guest’s vehicle are not known at the time of writing. The officer has been instructed to point at any vehicle that appears to contain a boy.”

Frederick put down his spoon.

“14.00,” read his mother. “Arrival of the guest. Footnote two.”

She turned the page over.

“Footnote two. Probably.”

She looked at Frederick over the top of her reading glasses. He looked back at her. Neither of them said anything. At her elbow Dacre looked at the floor with great concentration, as though there were something written on it.

“14.00 to 16.00,” read his mother, turning back. “The Prince and the guest at liberty. In the north wing, the gardens, and any part of the building that is not locked. The following are locked: the cellars; the strongroom; the roof; the Private Secretary’s office; the Master of the Household’s office, which is not ordinarily locked but will be, on this occasion, for reasons the Master of the Household would prefer not to give.” She paused. “Footnote three. The reasons are the floor-polishing machine, which is being kept in it over the weekend, and which the Master of the Household considers to be a temptation.”

“The State Rooms,” his mother read, “are open to the public until 17.00, as on every Sunday. The Prince and the guest are not prevented from entering them. They are asked to remember that if they do, they will be in a museum, with several hundred people in it, and to conduct themselves accordingly. Footnote four.”

She did not turn over for footnote four. She looked at it, at the bottom of the page, and Frederick saw her face do something, and she held the page out across the table to him, without a word.

He read footnote four.

Footnote four. The Inspector has asked that the Prince be reminded that the visitors in the State Rooms do not know that the family lives in the house, beyond being told so, and that a boy of twelve in a jumper is not, in the Inspector’s experience, recognised in a museum, because nobody expects to see him there. The Inspector does not say this to encourage the Prince. He says it so that the Prince knows.

Frederick looked at it for a long time.

“He’s saying we could go in,” he said.

“He is saying,” said his mother, “that if you did, nobody would know.” She took the page back. “Which is not the same thing as saying you may. And not the same thing as saying you may not.” She looked at the next line. “The Inspector has clearly been taking lessons from Margaret.”

“15.30,” she read. “Cake. In the north wing kitchen. Or wherever the Prince and the guest are. Monsieur Arnaud to advise. Footnote five. Monsieur Arnaud has asked that it be recorded that he has not, at the time of writing, resolved the question of the half.

“16.00. The telephone. London.” She did not read that one in any particular voice. She just read it, and Frederick saw her look at it a moment longer than at the others, and then go on. “The Prince will take the call in the small sitting room as usual. The guest may wait in the kitchen with Bridget, who has asked to be given this duty.

“18.00. Departure of the guest, with his parents.” She turned the page. “There is no footnote to 18.00.”

She put the pages down on the table beside her coffee. She took off her reading glasses.

“Dacre,” she said.

“Ma’am.”

“Please tell Dame Margaret that I have read the timings, and that they are not a programme, and that they are the best thing the Household has produced in nine years, including the jubilee.” She folded her glasses. “And please tell Monsieur Arnaud that if he would like to resolve the question of the half, he should come and see the Prince. Who is the only person in this building who knows what it is supposed to look like.”

---

Monsieur Arnaud came at eleven.

He came up from the pastry kitchen, which was in the basement of the main block under the State Rooms, a long white room full of marble and copper and a cold so deliberate you could see your breath in it in August; and he came up the back stairs of the north wing and along the passage and knocked on the door of the small sitting room, where Frederick was at the table under the window doing nothing at all, which was to say looking at the Axis.

He was a small, round, anxious man of about sixty from Rouen, with a white coat and a white hat that he took off in the doorway and held against his chest in both hands, and he had been the Palace’s pastry chef since 1998, and he had made the cake for every occasion the Palace had held since, and the wedding cakes, Bridget said, for half the Privy Council’s daughters; and he looked, standing in the doorway of the small sitting room on Saturday morning, like a man who had not slept since Tuesday.

“Monseigneur,” he said.

“Good morning, Monsieur Arnaud.”

“I have not slept,” said Monsieur Arnaud, “since Tuesday.”

Frederick got up from the table.

“I am sorry,” said Monsieur Arnaud. “It is not your fault. It is the half.” He came one step into the room, holding the hat. “I have made cakes for kings, Monseigneur. For your father, for the golden jubilee, a cake of five tiers, one for each decade, with the arms of fourteen Crowns in sugar, and not one of them confused with another; it took me nine weeks and I slept every night. I have made a cake for an Emperor that had to be carried up the stairs by six footmen. I have made a cake for an ambassador’s daughter in the shape of a horse, which she did not like.” He turned the hat round. “I have never been asked to make a cake for half of a birthday.”

“No,” said Frederick.

“What is it?” said Monsieur Arnaud. “What is half a birthday? Is it smaller? Is it the same size, with half the candles? Is it a whole cake cut in half, and then what do you do with the other half? Is it a cake for twelve, with a half beside it, a little one, like a child?” He turned the hat round again. “I have drawn it thirty-one ways. I have them here.” He took a sheaf of papers out of the pocket of his white coat, folded, many times, covered in pencil. “Thirty-one cakes. Not one of them is a half-birthday. They are all cakes that are confused.”

Frederick looked at the papers.

He thought about the plain white card in the drawer of his desk, the third one, with the cake on it. He did not have it; it was on a fridge on Dunmore Street, probably, by now, if Theo had kept his word, held on by a magnet. But he did not need it. He knew exactly what it looked like. He had drawn it the way he drew everything, from the outside in, in its parts.

“May I borrow a pencil?” he said.

Monsieur Arnaud gave him one, from behind his ear.

Frederick sat down at the table under the window and turned over the top sheet of Monsieur Arnaud’s thirty-one cakes, and on the back of it he drew it again. A rectangle seen from the side, which was the cake. A smaller rectangle on top, which was the icing. A line through the middle, top to bottom, because it was a half-birthday and so it was a cake divided. And one candle, on the left-hand half, with a flame. And then, because his hand was still going, and because Monsieur Arnaud ought to have all the parts, the labels: CANDLE (1). HALF (A). HALF (B). And the arrow from the candle down into the cake, with INSERT.

He gave it to Monsieur Arnaud.

Monsieur Arnaud looked at it.

He looked at it for a long time, holding it in both hands, with his white hat under his arm. His face, which had looked since he came in like the face of a man who had not slept since Tuesday, did a number of things, one after another, slowly, the way a face does when it is reading something in a language it knows but has not used for years. He looked at the rectangle, and the line through the middle, and the candle, and the labels, and the arrow.

“Insert,” said Monsieur Arnaud.

“That’s the candle,” said Frederick. “Going in.”

“Yes.” Monsieur Arnaud looked up. “Yes, I see. I see that it is the candle going in.” He looked back at the drawing. “Half A,” he said slowly. “With the candle. And Half B.” He looked up again. “And what is on Half B, Monseigneur?”

Frederick had not thought about it.

He thought about it now. He thought about a boy on a wall, doing a sum on his fingers, May, June, July, August, September, October, November; and finding a date that nobody had booked, that was just lying there, empty, in the middle of the year.

“Nothing,” he said. “Half B’s the half that’s not anybody’s yet.”

Monsieur Arnaud stood in the small sitting room of the north wing with the drawing in his hands for perhaps a full minute without saying anything at all.

Then he folded it, very carefully, once, and put it in the inside pocket of his white coat, over his heart, and put the other thirty-one cakes back in the outside pocket, crumpled, as though they no longer mattered, and put his hat on.

“Bon,” said Monsieur Arnaud. “I shall sleep tonight.”

He went to the door. At the door he stopped and turned round.

“Monseigneur,” he said. “May I ask who drew the first one?”

“I did.”

Monsieur Arnaud looked at him.

“For the boy?”

“On his invitation.”

Monsieur Arnaud nodded slowly, under the white hat, as though a great many things about the last five days had been explained to him at once.

“Then he knows,” he said, “what it is supposed to look like. And I will make it so that it does.” He opened the door. “Half A, with one candle. Half B, nothing yet.” He paused. “Plain sponge, Monseigneur? Or chocolate?”

Frederick thought about it.

“What would a boy from Milwaukee like?”

Monsieur Arnaud considered this with enormous seriousness, in the doorway, in his white hat.

“I have never made a cake for a boy from Milwaukee,” he said. “But I have been told by Bridget, who has a view, that in Wisconsin they put cheese in things that do not require it.” He shuddered, very slightly. “So I shall make it chocolate. On the principle that it is the furthest thing from cheese.”

---

The afternoon was very long.

He did not know what to do with it. He had never had an afternoon in which there was nothing to do except wait for something to happen somewhere else. He did his mathematics homework, all of it, including the questions that were optional. He did his history, which was a paragraph on why the news of Victoria’s death took a month to reach New Westminster, and he wrote it three times, because the first two had his family’s names in them more often than he liked. He went to the wall map in his room and looked at the six realms marked on it in red, and the seventh in pencil, in Sweden, and the eighth in smaller pencil, in Malaya, and found that he was not thinking about any of them; he was thinking about a street he had never seen.

At two o’clock he went and found the timetable for Union Station, the Saturday one, and read the arrivals from two o’clock to six, all of them, the Boston train and the Philadelphia stopping service and the slow one from Richmond that called at fourteen places he had never been, because reading the arrivals had always made him feel better, ever since he was six, because they arrived; and it did not make him feel better at all.

At three his mother came into the small sitting room with her knitting and sat down in the armchair by the fire and did not say anything. She knitted. The long dark green thing on four needles was nearly two feet long now, and had a white band in it, and then more green, and the beginning of a second white band. She did not say what it was. He did not ask. He sat at the table under the window and looked down the Axis, east, towards the white buildings at the far end and the river beyond them and everything beyond the river, all of it, the whole of the city, which he could see from here in the November light going grey and blue in the distance, and somewhere in it, north-east, across the river, past the depot, a street called Dunmore Street.

“Mamma,” he said, at about half past four.

“Mm?”

“What time do people have supper? Ordinary people.”

His mother knitted a row.

“In Stockholm,” she said, “about six. In London, later, about eight, unless they have children, in which case they eat at six and then again at eight. On Öland, at five, because the caretaker gets up at four.” She turned the needles. “In Milwaukee I do not know. I imagine it is early. It is the middle of a continent. People who live in the middle of continents eat early, because there is a great deal of dark.”

“Theo said half past six.”

“Then it is half past six,” said his mother, “on Dunmore Street.” She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, which said twenty-five to five. “Two hours.”

He looked out of the window.

---

At half past six the lamps were on along the Axis, two lines of them, going away east in the dark to the white buildings, which were lit too, from below, so that they stood up out of the dark like the paper buildings in a theatre; and beyond them the city was a spread of small lights, orange and white, going all the way to the edge of the sky.

Frederick sat at the table under the window and looked at it.

His mother had stopped knitting. She was sitting in the armchair by the fire with the knitting in her lap and her hands on it and her eyes on the fire. She had not had supper either. Neither of them had said anything about supper. Bridget had sent up a tray at six, with soup and bread and cheese, and it was on the side table, and neither of them had touched it.

Now, he thought. He’s putting out the forks.

He could see it. He had never seen it, but he could see it: a kitchen that was also a sitting room, with a table, and a stove, and a window onto a depot with buses in it. A man in a chair with arms, doing a crossword with a pencil behind his ear. A woman at the stove with a tea towel over her shoulder, the Wisconsin one, stirring. A girl at the table with her headphones in, on her phone under it. An orange cat on the windowsill, the shape of a pastry, watching the buses come in. And a boy, laying the table, with two cards in his sweatshirt and a sentence he had been working on since a Wednesday the week before last, putting down the forks, one by one, by each plate, and getting to his father’s, and saying, in passing, as if it were nothing:

I’ve been asked to a birthday.

He found that he was holding the edge of the table with both hands.

“Älskling,” said his mother.

He did not look round.

“Älskling,” said his mother again, very quietly, in Swedish, from the armchair by the fire. “Come and sit by me.”

He went. He did not know why. He sat on the floor beside the armchair, by the fire, the way he had sat when he was five and six and seven, when she read to him, with his back against the side of the chair and his knees up; and his mother put her hand on his hair, and did not flatten it, just left it there, and they sat by the fire in the small sitting room of the north wing and watched the logs burn and did not say anything at all.

---

At seven nothing happened.

At eight nothing happened. Bridget sent up a second tray, without being asked, with two mugs of hot chocolate on it and a plate of the small Swedish biscuits shaped like hearts, and a note in her round blue writing that said DRINK IT, and they drank it.

At nine his mother said, “There is no reason, älskling, that we should hear anything tonight. They do not have a number. There is no way for anybody to tell us. We will know tomorrow at two, when a car comes across the forecourt or does not.” She put her mug down. “That is what is so dreadful about it. And so ordinary. Nobody in the world is going to tell us anything until tomorrow.”

At a quarter past nine there was a knock on the door of the small sitting room.

His mother looked up.

Frederick was on his feet before he knew he had stood up.

“Come in,” said his mother.

It was Dame M.

She was not in the grey suit. He had never in his life seen Dame Margaret Roper not in the grey suit; he had not been entirely sure, until that moment, that she owned anything else. She was in a dark blue jersey and grey trousers, and her hair was down, not much, but a little, at one side, as though she had been interrupted in the middle of taking it down; and she was not carrying the folder. She stood in the doorway of the small sitting room with nothing in her hands at all.

“Ma’am,” she said. “Sir. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Margaret,” said his mother.

“The switchboard put a call through to me,” said Dame M, “at four minutes past nine. From an outside line. A man who said that he had got the number from directory enquiries, and that he was sorry to ring so late, and that he would only be a minute.” She paused. “He was four. I wrote it down. I thought, sir, that you would want it exactly.”

She took a piece of paper out of the pocket of the trousers. It was a sheet from the pad by the switchboard, folded once, with writing on it in her own hand, which was small and upright and very fast.

She read it.

“This is Peter Hartigan. Theo’s dad. About tomorrow. I’m sorry it’s late, we only found out at half past six.” She did not do the voice. She read it in her own, the Navy one, clearly, the way you read a signal. “We’ll be bringing him at two. In a brown estate, a 1991, it’s Mr Dabrowski’s from downstairs, he’s lending it on condition he comes, so there’ll be five of us in it, but only the boy’s getting out. We’ll come back for him at six.” She paused. “His mother says to say thank you for having him. She’s written a reply to your card and she’s going to bring it, by hand, because she says it said R.S.V.P. and there wasn’t time for the post.” She turned the paper over. “And she wants to know if there’s anything he shouldn’t do.”

She folded the paper.

“That was all, ma’am. Four minutes.”

Frederick stood in the middle of the small sitting room.

He did not say anything. He could not. He stood on the carpet in front of the fire with his hands at his sides and the hot chocolate still warm in him and the paper in Dame M’s hand, folded, with the words on it, we only found out at half past six, and five of us, and only the boy’s getting out, and by hand; and he found that the thing in his chest, the thing like the moment just before you laugh in church, was there, but that it was not that, it was something else, bigger, with no name at all, and that it was coming up into his throat and his eyes and he could not stop it.

His mother was standing too. He had not seen her stand. She was beside him, and her hand was on his back, flat, between his shoulders, the way she put it there at garden parties when she moved him on.

“What did you tell him, Margaret?” she said. “When he asked. What the boy shouldn’t do.”

Dame M looked at the folded paper in her hand.

“I told him, ma’am,” she said, “that the Household had only one request.” She paused. “That nobody should fall in the pond.”

His mother made a sound.

“Because of Charlotte,” said Dame M, to the paper. “In 2020. And Alexander. I had the Inspector out of bed for that one.” She put the paper back in the pocket of her trousers. “Mr Hartigan said that he would pass it on. He said that he could not promise anything, because he had met his son. And then he said thank you, ma’am, and goodnight, and rang off.” She looked up. “He called me ma’am. I don’t know why. I hadn’t told him who I was.”

“He’s a bus driver,” said Frederick.

His voice came out wrong. Everybody heard it come out wrong. Nobody said anything about it.

“He calls everybody who sounds like they’re in charge ma’am,” said Frederick. “Theo said. Even the inspectors on the buses. Even if they’re men. He says it’s quicker.”

Dame M looked at him for a long moment, in the dark blue jersey, with her hair coming down at one side, and he saw her face do the thing it did when she was trying very hard not to do anything with it, and fail, and not mind.

“Then he is a very sensible man, sir,” she said. “And I shall be at the north wing door tomorrow at a quarter to two, to see what comes across the forecourt.” She turned to go. “In the grey suit.”

“Margaret,” said his mother.

Dame M stopped.

“Thank you,” said his mother, in English, in her careful voice, the one with too much on it. “For taking the call yourself.”

Dame M stood in the doorway with her back to them and her hand on the frame.

“Ma’am,” she said, “the switchboard asked me whether they should put him through to the Inspector, or to Mr Pargeter, or to the duty officer. Because it was an outside call, at night, from an unknown number, about the Prince.” She paused. “I told them that it was a father ringing about a lift, and that in every house I have ever lived in, that call goes to whoever is still up.”

She went out, and shut the door behind her very quietly, and they heard her go along the corridor, not at the pace of somebody crossing a deck, but slowly, the way you walk in your own house at night when everybody else has gone to bed.

---

His mother sat down in the armchair again. She picked up her knitting. She did not knit. She held it in her lap and looked at the fire.

“Five,” she said, after a while, in Swedish.

“Five.”

“In a brown estate. A 1991.” She turned the needles over. “With a neighbour from downstairs who is lending it on condition that he comes. To see the Palace from the car.” She shook her head slowly. “Älskling, I have received heads of state at the front of this house in cars that cost more than the house in Stockholm I was born in, and not one of them, not once, has ever brought the neighbour.”

Frederick sat on the floor by the armchair, with his back against it, and his knees up.

“They found out at half past six,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And they rang at four minutes past nine.”

“Yes.” His mother put her hand on his hair. “Two and a half hours. To find a car, and a neighbour, and a directory, and a reason to telephone a palace at night.” She left her hand there. “And to write a reply to a card, by hand, because it said R.S.V.P. and there was not time for the post.” Her hand was very still. “In two and a half hours. On a Saturday night. I think, älskling, that if anybody had told those people they had a week, they would have had a very hard week.”

“That’s what Theo said.”

“Then Theo,” said his mother, “is a very wise boy, and I should like very much to meet him.” She took her hand off his hair and picked up the needles. “Tomorrow. At two. Probably.” She began to knit. “Go to bed.”

He went to bed.

He lay in the dark in his room at the top of the north wing, under the wall map with the six realms and the seventh in pencil, with the curtains open, because he had left them open, so that he could see the Axis; and he looked at it, the two lines of lamps going away east in the dark to the white buildings, and the city beyond them, all the small orange lights, all the way to the edge of the sky; and somewhere in it, north-east, across the river, past a bus depot, on the fourth floor of a block on Dunmore Street, number forty, flat sixteen, a woman who wrote in green was writing a reply to a card at a counter, standing up, and a man who had put down his pencil was lying awake, probably, the wall was thin, and an orange cat was on a windowsill watching the last of the buses come in; and a boy who had found a date that nobody had booked was asleep, because he had done it, and it was done, and there was no time left for anybody to make a thing of it.

He did the sum on his fingers, under the blanket, in the dark, without moving his lips.

May. June. July. August. September. October. November.

Six. And then the second.

Tomorrow.