The Names

Three aircraft came into New York on the morning of the first of May, and none of them together.

His father’s came first, from London, overnight, landing at six in the dark at an airfield on Long Island that the Realm’s royal squadron used and nobody else did; and his mother’s second, at half past seven, from New Westminster; and his own third, at a quarter past eight, from the same airfield across the river from the Axis, on a different aircraft of the same squadron, with Castellanos in the seat across the aisle and nobody else at all.

He looked out of the window as they came down. New York was grey and enormous and flat under a low sky, going away in every direction to water, with the towers standing up out of the middle of it like the pipes of an organ; and somewhere in it, under the towers, four places that he had known the names of all his life, the way he knew the names of the realms. Grand Central. Kennedy. The Ferry Terminal. The Union March, which was not a place at all, but a street on a Monday, and a thing people had been doing on it.

He had been coming since he was five. Every first of May. This was the eighth.

He did not know what to do with his face on this day. He had never known. He had learned, at five, from his mother, that on this day you did nothing with it at all, not the face from the library or the face from the balcony, but nothing, because it was not your day; and he had done that, every year since, and he would do it today; and he sat with his hands on his knees in the seat of the aircraft and looked at the towers coming up and thought about it, and found, as he found every year, that it did not get any easier, and that it was not supposed to.

Castellanos, across the aisle, was looking at the window too.

He had not said anything since the airfield. He had not said seat belt. Frederick had put it on.

---

The concourse at Grand Central was full of people standing still.

That was the thing. A station concourse was a place for people moving; he knew that better than anybody; he knew it the way he knew the arrivals at Union Station on a Wednesday. People came into it and crossed it and went out of it, under the clock, to the trains, to the street, and the noise of a concourse was the noise of feet. On the first of May, at Grand Central, at twenty-five past ten, the concourse was full of people standing still, three thousand of them perhaps, under the great ceiling with the stars painted on it, in coats, in silence, facing the same way; and the noise was the noise of a building holding its breath.

He came in at the side, from Vanderbilt Avenue, with Castellanos behind him, not ten yards, nearer, three; and nobody looked at him.

They did not look at him because nobody looked at anybody. On this day, here, there was nothing to look at that was not the thing they had come for, and he was not that thing, and everybody in the concourse knew it, and so did he.

The families were at the front. They were in a space roped off on the floor of the concourse in front of the information booth, under the clock, a long way from the platform, which was a low dais at the east end with a lectern on it and a row of chairs; and they stood in no order at all, which was the order the commission had chosen in 2007, because any order would have been an order of something, and the families had said they would rather stand as they came. Old people, mostly, now. Twenty years. Men and women in their sixties and seventies and eighties, in dark coats; and some younger, in their thirties and forties, who had been children; and some children, who had not been born, and were there for grandparents they had never met.

He went to them. He went to the rope and a woman from the commission in a dark suit lifted it, the way Mr Gamage had lifted the chain, without looking at him, and he went through, and stood among them, at the back, at the edge, where he had stood every year since he was five; and Castellanos stopped at the rope.

Nobody said anything to him. A man beside him, very old, in a dark overcoat and a hat, glanced down at him, and nodded, once, the way you nod to somebody you have stood beside before; and looked back at the clock.

He had stood beside him before. He realised it. He did not know his name. He had never known it. But he had stood beside this man, at this rope, on this day, he thought, at least four times; and the man had nodded, each time, once; and that was all.

His mother came in at twenty-five to eleven, from the other side, and went to the platform, and sat in one of the chairs, at the end, in black. His father was not there. His father was at the Union March, on the street where it had been, at a quarter past twelve, which was the last of the four; he went to a different site every year, and stood at the back, and did not speak, and this year it was the March, because it was twenty years, and the March had been the last, and the worst, and the only one of the four that had not been a place.

---

On the wall of the concourse, on the west side, under the windows, there was a stone.

It had been there since 2008. Frederick had seen it every year since he was five, and he looked at it now, from the back of the families, because it was where his eyes went; a long low wall of grey granite, set into the west side of the concourse, with the Names cut into it in small plain capitals, eight hundred and four of them, a name and an age, in rows, from the floor to the height of a man’s shoulders; and above them, along the top, a single sentence, larger, cut into the stone without a name under it, or a date, or anything to say who had said it or when.

WE WILL KEEP THE DAY. THEY WERE GOING ABOUT THEIRS.

His father had said it. In February 2007. On King’s Day, the first after, when the whole Realm had wondered whether there could be a King’s Day at all, a holiday in February with two thousand people not yet ten months dead; and his father had put down the text of the address, at noon, live, in a voice that his mother said had not been quite steady, and said that sentence, and nothing else about it, and picked the text up again.

It was the only sentence of his father’s anywhere in the Realm that was carved in stone. It was not on a palace or a cathedral or a monument to a King. It was on the wall of a station, at the height of a man’s shoulders, where people going to trains walked past it every day without stopping, which was where it was meant to be.

He looked at it. He did not look at anything else until the reading began.

---

The reading began at half past ten.

It began without anybody saying that it was going to begin. A woman went up onto the low dais at the east end, a woman of about sixty in a dark coat, with grey hair, not from the commission, not from anything, one of the families; and stood at the lectern; and unfolded a sheet of paper; and put on her reading glasses; and read.

“Grand Central,” she said.

And then a name. And an age.

That was all. A name and an age. No rank. No employer. No title, no office, nothing to say what they had done, or where they had been going, or why. The commission had decided it in 2006, and the families had agreed, and it had never been changed; and the woman at the lectern read a name, and an age, and a name, and an age, in the order of the site and then the alphabet, in a voice that carried to the back of the concourse without being loud; and after each one, the length of a breath, a pause.

Frederick stood at the back of the families and listened.

He listened the way he had listened to Mr Abernathy read the register on the first morning; the same voice for every name, the same pause after it, so that nobody’s name was louder than anybody else’s, and nobody’s pause was longer. He did not count. He knew the number. He knew all the numbers; he had known them since he was six, when he had asked his father on the telephone how many, and his father had told him, and then, after a long silence, told him how many at each site, and then said that he was not to learn them as numbers, and Frederick had learned them anyway, because he could not help it, and had never told his father. Grand Central was eight hundred and four. He did not count. He let them go past, one at a time, in the voice that did not change, and the pause the length of a breath, the way the trains went past on the board at Union Station, one after another, arriving.

Somewhere in the second hundred the woman at the lectern stopped, and stepped back, and a man came up and took her place, a man of about seventy with a white moustache; and read on.

Somewhere in the fourth hundred, the man stepped back, and a boy came up. A boy of about sixteen, tall and thin, in a suit that was too big for him, with his hands shaking; and stood at the lectern; and read.

He read the name of a woman called Halloran. Margaret Halloran. Sixty-two.

Not the Lieutenant-Governor. Not Her Honour. Just the name, and the age, in the same voice as the name before it and the name after it, and the same pause.

Frederick felt the families round him go still. Not stiller than they had been. Still in a different way. He felt the old man beside him, in the hat, take a breath, and let it out.

The boy at the lectern read on.

---

At thirty-seven minutes past ten the reading stopped.

It stopped in the middle of a name. That was how it was done. Whoever was reading stopped, at the moment, at the second, whatever name they were on, and stepped back from the lectern, and did not finish it; and the clock on the information booth, the great round brass one with four faces, said twenty-three minutes to eleven; and nobody in the concourse moved at all.

He did not move.

He had stood in this silence seven times. He knew how long it was. It was two minutes. He did not count them. He stood at the back of the families with his hands at his sides and looked at the stone on the west wall, at the sentence, and did not do anything with his face, and the silence went on, under the painted stars, three thousand people not moving in a station built for people who moved; and somewhere beneath them, far down, in the tunnels, a train went through, slowly, on a line that ran under the concourse, because the trains did not stop for this, they had decided in 2007 that the trains would not stop, because the people on the trains were going about their day too; and he heard it go, under his feet, a long low rumble that went on and on and faded; and thought of the man in the box at Havre de Grace, pulling a lever, somewhere, at this minute, so that it could.

Beside him the old man in the hat was crying.

He was not making any sound. He was standing quite straight, in his dark overcoat, with his hands at his sides, looking at the clock, and the tears were running down his face and into his collar, and he was not doing anything about them at all.

Frederick did not look at him. He looked at the stone. But he moved, very slightly, on the floor of the concourse, so that he was standing an inch closer; close enough that his shoulder was against the old man’s arm, through the coats, the way he had stood against his father on the balcony in the cold in February. He did not know why. He had never done it at this rope before. He did not know whether it was allowed.

The old man did not look down.

But after a moment, without moving anything that anybody in the concourse could have seen, he leaned, a little, the other way.

---

The reading went on until twenty past twelve.

Frederick stood for all of it. He always did. He had stood for all of it at five, when his legs had hurt so much that his mother had said afterwards that she had seen him shaking and had not known whether to take him out, and had decided not to, because he had not asked; and he had stood for all of it every year since. Eight hundred and four names. A name and an age.

At twenty past twelve the last reader, a girl of about Kate’s age, read the last name, and an age, and stepped back; and there was a pause, much longer than the length of a breath; and then the families began, very slowly, to move.

The old man in the hat turned to him.

He looked down at Frederick for the first time; properly; for about three seconds; the way you look at a boy you have stood beside at a rope for eight years and never spoken to.

“You’ve grown,” he said.

His voice was low and rough and very ordinary. It was a New York voice, with the city all through it the way Mr Hartigan’s had Milwaukee.

“Yes,” said Frederick.

“My granddaughter,” said the old man. He nodded at the lectern. “Third hundred. Rosa. Twenty-six.” He did not say anything else about her. He did not need to. “She was going to the dentist.”

Frederick did not say anything. There was nothing to say. He had been taught that at five, too, by his mother: that on this day, if somebody told you a name, you said nothing at all, you just held it, because they had given it to you and it was not yours to do anything with.

The old man looked at him a moment longer. Then he put his hand on Frederick’s shoulder, briefly, heavily, the way Mr Hartigan had put his on the back of Theo’s neck at the north wing door; and took it away; and turned, and went, slowly, through the families, towards the doors on Vanderbilt Avenue, and was gone.

Frederick stood at the back of the rope.

At the rope, three yards away, Castellanos was standing with his hands folded, looking at the stone on the west wall. His face was doing nothing at all. His eyes were wet.

---

His father spoke at four, in a hall in Brooklyn.

He did not speak on this day. He had never spoken on this day. He had said so, in 2007, and every year since; that the first of May belonged to the dead, and the wounded, and their families, and not to the Crown, and that the Crown should be there, and be silent, and go. He went to a site, and stood at the back, and said nothing, and went.

This year he spoke. Once. In the afternoon. Not at any of the four sites. Not on a platform.

In a hall.

It was a long low brick hall in Brooklyn, with a wooden floor and a stage at one end and folding chairs, three hundred of them, and a smell of floor polish and coffee and something baked; the hall where the Slavic societies of New York met, the Ukrainian and the Polish and the Russian and the Serbian and the Czech and all the others, for dances and weddings and meetings and, in 2006, in the weeks after, for something else. There were flags along the walls, small ones, many of them, of countries that were not the Realm and of societies that were in it. There was a long table at the back with urns of coffee and plates of cakes, and women in aprons behind it, who did not stop pouring.

Frederick was at the back, standing, by the coffee, with his mother, and Castellanos. Nobody had told him to stand there. He had asked, in March, whether he might come, and his father had said, on the telephone, you may come and stand at the back, and you will not be introduced, and you will not be mentioned, and if anybody asks who you are you will say you are with your mother; and he had said yes.

The hall was full. Every chair. People standing along the walls. Old people, mostly, again; and their children; and their grandchildren. They did not look at him. They were looking at the stage.

His father came onto it at four exactly.

He came on slowly, with the stick, in a dark suit and a black tie, alone, without the Household, without anybody, and stood at the front of the stage, not at the lectern, which was there and which he did not use, but beside it, with both hands on the stick; and looked at the hall.

He did not have a piece of paper.

He stood there for some time. The hall was absolutely silent. One of the women behind the coffee urns stopped pouring.

And then he spoke.

He did not speak for long. Frederick timed it, without meaning to, on the clock on the wall of the hall over the stage, which had a crack across its face; it was two minutes and forty seconds. His father spoke in the voice he used for the address at noon on King’s Day, which was the voice he used for things that would be heard by everybody and kept; and he did not use any word that he did not need.

He said that twenty years ago, on a Monday, people from this hall had died at Grand Central and at Kennedy and at the Ferry Terminal and on the March, with everybody else, in the same places and the same minutes, and that their names were on the stones with everybody else’s, a name and an age.

He said that in the weeks after, their families had been treated by their neighbours as though they had done it. That their windows had been broken, and their shops burnt, and their children followed home from school; and that their names had been put on lists by the state, lists that had never been published, and that some of them were on those lists still.

He said that the Crown had not done enough to stop it.

He said that he had not.

And he said that he was sorry.

He did not say anything else. He did not say what he had said in 2006, on the afternoon of the day, in the address by wire from a study in England, when he had asked the Realm not to look for the murderers among its neighbours; he did not say I asked. He did not say I warned. He did not say anything at all that might have been heard as it was not my fault. Frederick listened for it, standing at the back by the coffee urns, because he knew his father, and he knew how a sentence about the past could be built so that the man saying it came out of it standing a little higher; and it was not there. His father stood at the front of the stage with both hands on the stick and said I am sorry, and then he stopped, and stood there.

The hall did not do anything.

It did not clap. There was nothing to clap. It sat, three hundred people on folding chairs, and the people along the walls, and the women behind the urns; and looked at an old man in a dark suit at the front of a stage in Brooklyn, leaning on a stick, who had said that he was sorry and was not saying anything else.

Then, at the front, in the first row, a very old woman stood up.

She was small, and bent, in a black dress and a black headscarf, and she stood up slowly, with a hand on the back of the chair in front of her; and she did not say anything either. She looked up at the stage, at the King, for a long time. And then she nodded. Once.

And sat down.

His father looked at her. He bowed his head to her, very slightly. And then he turned, with the stick, slowly, and walked off the stage the way he had come, alone.

The woman behind the coffee urn nearest Frederick began, very quietly, to pour again.

---

He flew back at seven, on his own aircraft, with Castellanos in the seat across the aisle; and his mother at eight; and his father at nine, to New Westminster, not to London, because tomorrow was the second of May.

He looked out of the window as they climbed. New York going away below him, grey and enormous and flat, with the lights coming on in it, all the way to the water; and somewhere in it, under the towers, a station with a stone on the wall and an old man in a hat going home to a flat somewhere with his granddaughter’s name in him; and a hall in Brooklyn with a cracked clock and three hundred folding chairs being stacked; and a woman in a black headscarf.

Castellanos, across the aisle, said nothing until they were over the water.

Then he said, to the window:

“My mother’s cousin.”

Frederick looked at him.

“At the Ferry Terminal,” said Castellanos. “Twenty-one. A deckhand.” He did not turn from the window. “Third name on the Ferry list. I’ve never been to the reading. I’ve never been on a first of May. I’ve always been on duty.” A pause. “This is the first year I’ve been on duty somewhere I could hear it.”

Frederick sat with his hands on his knees.

He did not say anything. There was nothing to say. He held it, because it had been given to him, and it was not his to do anything with.

After a while, across the aisle, without looking at each other, they both looked out of the windows at the dark.