Briefings

The reply came on Thursday the twenty-eighth of May, second class, in green, to London.

Frederick did not see it. He was not supposed to; it was not addressed to him. It was addressed, Dame M told him at the Friday meeting by the fire, to His Majesty the King, Buckingham Palace, London, in a quick strong sloping hand, on a small cheap white envelope of the kind sold in packets of fifty, with a second-class stamp, a little crooked, and a postmark from Canal Street; and it had gone across the Atlantic in the ordinary mail, with everybody else’s letters, and arrived on the King’s desk in the study with the boxes in fourteen colours on the Tuesday morning, and the King had read it at breakfast, at six, alone.

“How do you know?” said Frederick.

“Because he telephoned me at eleven,” said Dame M, “our time, to say that it had come.” She did not open the folder. “He said it was the first letter he had received in green ink since 1981, when a constituent in Leeds wrote to complain about a swan.” She paused. “He did not tell me what it said. He said only that the answer was yes, and that Mrs Hartigan had asked whether Theo should wear anything in particular, and that he had written back the same day, by hand, to say whatever he wears to school.”

Frederick looked at the fire.

“He wrote back?”

“He wrote back, sir. By return. By the ordinary post.” Dame M’s face did nothing at all. “Second class.”

---

The first letter had gone in the middle of May.

Frederick had not seen that either. He had only been told, by his father, on the telephone, on the Sunday after the birthday, at four, that it had gone: a letter in his own hand, on the plain paper without the crest, to Mr and Mrs Peter Hartigan, 40 Dunmore Street, Flat 16, asking whether their son might come to tea at Columbia Palace on Wednesday the third of June, at four o’clock, after school, for about an hour; saying that the King would be in New Westminster that week and would like very much to meet the boy who sat beside his son by the aisle; and saying that if it was not convenient, or if they would rather he did not, they had only to say so, and he would not ask why.

“I put by the aisle,” his father had said. “I thought it was important to be exact.”

So Theo knew. Theo had known since the twentieth of May, when the letter came, and his mother had opened it at the counter, standing up, before her shift, and read it, and sat down, which she did not do; and Theo had told Frederick on the wall on the twenty-first, with an apple, in about four words, Mum got the letter, and had not said anything else about it at all.

He had not asked what the King was like.

He had not asked what to call him, or what to wear, or what they would talk about, or whether there would be other people, or how long it would be. He had not asked anything at all. He had sat on the wall for twelve days with an apple every morning and talked about the pothole on the twenty-two, which had been filled in at last by the District, on a Tuesday, at night, and which Harold was in mourning for; and about Kate, who had got a Saturday job at a bakery on Canal Street and come home with flour in her hair and a temper; and about Kringle, who had caught a pigeon on the windowsill and not known what to do with it; and not once about Wednesday the third of June.

---

Mr Pargeter’s note came on Monday the first, at a quarter past six, on the salver, with Dacre.

It was two pages. Typed. Stapled. Numbered. On the Household’s paper, the one with the crest. At the top it said NOTE FOR A GUEST: TEA WITH HIS MAJESTY, and under it, in smaller type, Prepared by the Office of the Private Secretary for the guidance of guests unfamiliar with the Household’s customs, and under that, in pen, in Mr Pargeter’s hand, which was very small and very upright: For Master Hartigan, via H.R.H., if H.R.H. thinks fit.

Frederick read it at the breakfast table by the range, over the egg.

1. On being presented to His Majesty, the guest should bow, from the neck, briefly. A full bow from the waist is not expected and may cause embarrassment.

2. The guest should address His Majesty, on first being spoken to, as “Your Majesty”. Thereafter “sir” is correct. The guest should not use His Majesty’s name.

3. The guest should not sit until His Majesty has sat, or has indicated that the guest may sit.

4. The guest should not begin to eat or drink until His Majesty has begun, or has indicated that the guest may begin.

5. The guest should not initiate a topic of conversation. His Majesty will ask questions. The guest should answer them.

6. The guest should not ask His Majesty questions of a personal nature, or about matters of State, or about other members of the Royal Family.

7. At the end of the tea, His Majesty will rise. The guest should rise at once. His Majesty may shake the guest’s hand, in which case the guest should take it, briefly. The guest should not offer his hand first.

8. The guest should not turn his back on His Majesty when leaving the room, if it can conveniently be avoided.

There were fourteen. He read them all. Number eleven said that the guest should not comment on the furniture. Number thirteen said that the guest should not refer afterwards, in public or to the press, to anything said at the tea. Number fourteen said that the guest should, above all, be himself, and not be anxious, and remember that His Majesty is accustomed to meeting people of every kind and will put the guest at ease.

Bridget, at the range, with her back to him, said, “Well?”

“It’s fourteen rules,” said Frederick.

“Mr Pargeter likes a rule.” Bridget banged a pan. “He had a rule for the bins. I put my foot down.” She turned round. “Are you going to give it him?”

Frederick looked at the two pages.

He thought about Theo on the wall, for twelve days, with an apple, talking about the pothole. He thought about number six, should not ask His Majesty questions of a personal nature, which Theo had never done about anybody in his life, and number five, should not initiate a topic of conversation, and number fourteen, be himself, which was the only one that was any good, and which was at the bottom, after thirteen rules telling him how not to.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Dame Margaret says it’s to be his choice,” said Bridget. “She said so to Mr Pargeter. In the corridor. At seven last night. She said, the note goes to the boy, Mr Pargeter, and the boy decides whether to read it, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t, and nobody’s to ask him whether he has.” She turned back to the range. “Mr Pargeter went the colour of beetroot.”

---

He gave it to Theo on the wall at ten to eight.

He held it out, the two pages, folded once, and Theo looked at it, and at Frederick, and did not take it.

“What’s that?”

“It’s from the Household. From the Private Secretary’s office. A note.” Frederick looked at the depot apple in his other hand. “For you. About Wednesday. About how to have tea with my father.” He paused. “There are fourteen rules. Dame Margaret says you don’t have to read it. She says it’s your choice.”

Theo looked at the folded paper.

He looked at it for about three seconds, steadily, the way he looked at everything; taking it in. He did not reach for it.

“Have you read it?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Is it any good?”

Frederick thought about it honestly, because Theo had asked honestly.

“Number fourteen’s good,” he said. “It says be yourself.”

“What are the other thirteen?”

“How not to.”

Theo looked at the paper a moment longer. Then he took it. He took it out of Frederick’s hand, and did not unfold it, and did not look at it; he put it in the pocket of his sweatshirt, inside, against his chest, folded, the way he had put the careers sheet with Evolve on it, as though it might be rained on.

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“No,” said Theo.

“Why not?”

Theo bit his apple. He chewed for a while, looking across the yard at the window of Mr Pavlik’s office, where Castellanos was sitting with his coffee; and he lifted his hand, and the finger came up off the cup.

“Because if I read it,” he said, “I’ll have decided.”

Frederick looked at him.

“How I’m going to be,” said Theo. “On Wednesday. With your dad. If I read fourteen rules about how to have tea with him, I’ll go in knowing how I’m going to be, and I’ll be it.” He chewed. “And then I won’t be there. I’ll be the rules.” He looked at the apple. “I’d rather find out when I get there.”

He said it the way he said everything. As if it were nothing. As if it were the time.

Frederick sat on the wall beside him with the depot apple and did not say anything for a long time.

The only person in the room who had not decided in advance how to behave toward me.

He had said it to his father on the telephone on the nineteenth of April, and his father had written it down, and asked Dame M to put it in her note, so that it would be in the record. And here was the boy it was about, on the wall, with an apple, refusing fourteen rules from the Private Secretary’s office so that he could go on not deciding; and he did not know he was the boy it was about, and he did not know it was in the record, and he would not have cared if he had.

“Freddie,” said Theo. “You’ve got that face.”

“What face?”

“The one from the second morning. When you were waiting for something to happen to mine.” Theo finished the apple and ate the bottom of the core. “It’s not going to. I keep telling you.” He put the core in his pocket, beside the folded note. “Bell’s going in a minute.”

---

Kate had watched a great deal of television.

Theo reported it at lunch, at the round table, in a low voice, while Lucía and June argued about whether the Post Office counter officer at careers day had been flirting with Gallagher’s uncle.

“She’s been practising on me,” said Theo. “Since the letter. Every night. In the bedroom. Through the curtain.” He ate something brown with a crust. “She’s watched every royal thing there’s ever been on the telly. Weddings. The King’s Day balconies. The opening of the Parliament. She’s got opinions.” He chewed. “She says I’ve got to bow. From the neck. And she showed me. And then she said I’d done it wrong and showed me again. And then she said I looked like a pigeon. And then she said I looked like Kringle with the pigeon.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I wasn’t going to bow from anywhere. I said I’d see when I got there.” Theo ate. “And she threw a shoe at me over the partition.”

“And your dad?”

Theo considered.

“Dad said,” he said, “call everybody sir.” He did the voice, briefly, low and slow, with Milwaukee in it. “Call everybody sir, son. You can’t go wrong with sir. If it’s a woman, ma’am. If you don’t know, sir.” He was himself again. “And then he said, it’s quicker.” He paused. “And then he went to the depot.”

“Again?”

“He goes to the depot when he doesn’t know what to say. He’s been to the depot four times since the letter.” Theo looked at his tray. “Harold says to tell your dad about the pothole. That it’s gone. He says the King should know.”

“And your mum?”

Theo was quiet for a moment.

“Mum’s ironing,” he said.

“Ironing what?”

“My school shirt. The white one. She’s ironed it four times. She irons it, and then she hangs it on the door, and then she looks at it, and then she takes it down and irons it again.” He put his fork down. “She said, last night, at the board, not looking at me, say please and thank you, and don’t break anything, and if you break anything, say so. Same as for the half.” He picked the fork up again. “And then she said, and answer when you’re spoken to, Theo, properly, in sentences, not like you answer me.” He considered. “And then she said, and look at him.”

“Look at him?”

“That’s what she said. Look at him.” Theo ate. “I don’t know what she meant. She didn’t say.”

---

He heard the rest of it in pieces, over Monday and Tuesday, on the wall and at lunch and at the bike racks at a quarter past three, the way Theo told things, in the order they had occurred to him.

That Mr Dabrowski had come up in the lift on Monday evening at six, which he was not allowed to, because six to seven was his own time in the lift and he had broken his own rule, and knocked on the door of flat sixteen with the grey felt hat in his hand, and come in, and sat down on the chair with the cushion tied on, and said to Theo, in the voice like a door that needed oiling, that he had met a king once. In 1965. On a parade ground, in the rain, doing his service. He had been nineteen, and the king had been inspecting the regiment, and had stopped in front of him, and looked at him, and asked him where he was from; and Mr Dabrowski had told him; and the king had nodded and said a long way, and gone on. “That was all,” Mr Dabrowski had said. “Four words. Sixty-one years ago.” He had put the hat back on. “Stand up straight, Theodore. Look him in the eye. Kings like that. They do not get it often.”

That Mrs Okonjo, on the second-floor landing, on Tuesday morning, as Theo went down to the bus, had opened her door on its chain and looked at him through the gap with her old dark steady eye, and said, in the voice like a church, Theodore, I hear you are to take tea with the King; and Theo had said yes, Mrs Okonjo; and Mrs Okonjo had looked at him a moment longer and said: A king is a man in a good coat, Theodore. Pray for him. He has more to carry than you. And shut the door.

That at the depot, on Monday night, Mr Hartigan had told Harold, and Harold had told the canteen, and the canteen had sent back, by Mr Hartigan, on a sheet torn off the rota, a list, in biro, in about thirty different hands, of things that Theo should tell the King. THE POTHOLE IS GONE. BRUNO IS STILL ALIVE. THE 9 IS ALWAYS LATE ON THURSDAYS AND NOBODY KNOWS WHY. ASK HIM IF HE’S EVER BEEN ON A BUS. DON’T ASK HIM IF HE’S EVER BEEN ON A BUS. WE ALL WAVE.

And at the round table, on Tuesday, Lucía had said that Theo should ask the King about the crown, because it was the only chance anybody at the table would ever have to find out whether it really gave him a headache; and June had put down her yoghurt with a click and said he will not, on principle; and Gallagher had said Theo should ask him what his favourite football team was; and Grant had gone red and said Theo should just say hello and thank you and nothing else, because that was what Grant would do; and Priya, who never said anything, had looked up from her crisps and said, quietly, to Theo, ask him what he looks at; and Theo had looked at her for a long time.

“What did she mean?” said Frederick, on the wall, at a quarter past three.

“I don’t know,” said Theo. “She didn’t say. She went back to her crisps.”

---

Castellanos said it in the car, on Tuesday, at the lights on the Axis.

He did not say it to Frederick. He said it to the windscreen, the way he said things, in the voice he used for sight lines and gravel; but he said it on the way home from school, at the lights, with the engine running, after a very long silence, and Frederick knew who it was for.

“He’ll ask a question, sir,” said Castellanos. “Your father. He’ll ask the young man a question.” A pause. “Tell him to answer the question he was asked. Not the one he thinks he was asked. Not the one he’d rather have been asked.” The lights changed. “The one he was asked.”

Frederick looked at the back of his head.

“That’s my father’s rule.”

“I know, sir,” said Castellanos. “I’ve heard you use it. In October. About a frog.” He pulled away up the Axis. “It’s a good rule.”

---

His father had come on Monday.

He had come in the evening, from the airfield across the river, on his own aircraft, at seven; and at a quarter to eight the standard on the flagstaff of the central block had come down, his own, with the label, and the other had gone up, the big one, without it, because only one flew at a time and it was always the senior; and Frederick had stood at the window of his room under the wall map and watched it go up, in the long June evening, in the light, and thought that on Wednesday at four a boy would walk across the forecourt and look up at that flagstaff, the way he looked at everything, for three seconds, and see that the flag was different, and not ask why.

He saw his father at dinner on Monday, and at breakfast on Tuesday, and at dinner on Tuesday, in the small dining room, with his mother, the three of them at the end of the long table by the fire, in June, with the windows open and the fire not lit.

His father did not ask him anything about Wednesday.

He asked about school. He asked about the fifth and sixth sittings, and Mrs Vance, and whether the face was done, and Frederick said yes, it was done, on Saturday, and that she had let him look, and his father asked what it looked like, and Frederick thought about it and said like somebody who is looking at somebody, and his father was quiet for a while and did not ask anything else about it. He asked about Bridget’s fridge. He asked about Robert Castle at Havre de Grace, and whether Frederick had written, and Frederick said yes, first class, and that Robert Castle had written back, on AmRail paper, to say that Doreen sent her regards and that the box was still there. He asked about the pothole, which he knew about, because Frederick had told him on the Sunday, and about Harold, who was in mourning.

He did not ask what the boy was like. He had asked that in April.

On Tuesday night, at the end of dinner, when his mother had gone up and the plates had gone down in the dumbwaiter, which Bridget now used for everything, on principle, since the second of November, his father sat at the end of the long table with his hands flat on it on either side of his empty plate and looked at the window, at the June evening going blue over the gardens, for some time.

“Is he nervous?” he said.

Frederick thought about it.

“Everybody’s nervous,” he said. “Except him.” He looked at the window too. “His mother’s ironed his shirt four times. His father’s been to the depot four times. His sister’s been practising a bow on him through the partition and says he looks like a pigeon. A man of eighty came up in the lift in his own hour to tell him about a king on a parade ground in the rain. A deaconess told him to pray for you. Forty bus drivers have sent you a list.” He paused. “Mr Pargeter sent him fourteen rules.”

His father’s hands did not move on the table.

“Did he read them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Frederick looked at the window.

“He said if he read them, he’d have decided,” he said. “How he was going to be. And then he wouldn’t be there. He’d be the rules.” He looked at his father. “He said he’d rather find out when he got there.”

His father looked at him down the corner of the long table for a long time, in the blue June light, with his hands flat on the wood on either side of his plate, and his face doing nothing at all, very hard.

“Yes,” he said at last, quietly. “Yes. I see.”

He got up. He was slow getting up. He took his stick from where it leaned against the table, and stood, and looked down at his son.

“Then I had better not decide either,” he said.

He went to the door. At the door he stopped, as Dame M did, without turning round.

“Frederick,” he said. “The list. From the depot. Have you got it?”

Frederick had it. It was in his pocket. Theo had given it to him at the bike racks at a quarter past three, a sheet torn off a rota, folded small, for your dad, from the lads; and he had not known what to do with it, and had carried it all evening.

He took it out. He held it out.

His father came back from the door, slowly, with the stick, and took it, and unfolded it, and put on his reading glasses, and read it, standing, by the end of the long table, in the June evening. All of it. THE POTHOLE IS GONE. BRUNO IS STILL ALIVE. THE 9 IS ALWAYS LATE ON THURSDAYS AND NOBODY KNOWS WHY. ASK HIM IF HE’S EVER BEEN ON A BUS. DON’T ASK HIM IF HE’S EVER BEEN ON A BUS. WE ALL WAVE.

He read it twice.

Then he folded it, very carefully, along its creases, and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket, on the left, where Frederick knew he kept the single sheet of paper with the single sentence on it, before a speech; and took off his reading glasses.

“I have been on a bus,” he said. “Once. In 1968. To the Post Office. For my passport.” He went to the door again. “I shall tell him so, if he asks.” He stopped. “He will not ask.”

“How do you know?”

His father stood in the doorway of the small dining room of the north wing of Columbia Palace, in the blue June evening, with the stick, and the list from the depot in his pocket, and did not turn round.

“Because you told me,” he said, “in April, what he is like.” He opened the door. “And I wrote it down.”