Simply Not Good

The chemistry paper was in his bag, at the bottom, under the history paper and the Spanish and a banana that had been there since Monday, and it had fifty-four on it in blue.

He had not taken it out since Tuesday. He did not need to. He knew where it was the way you know where a stone is in your shoe.

Equilibria. Again. See me if you wish.

He had shown it to his father at four o’clock on Tuesday, at the end of the long kitchen table at the Palace, by the range, under the clock that was four minutes slow and was not going to be put right, because that was the arrangement: at four the arrivals, and before the arrivals, whatever had come back that day. He had put it on the table face up, because Mrs Okonedo said a mark was a fact like any other, and facts were not improved by being turned over.

His father had looked at it for a long time from the wheelchair, with his good hand flat on the table beside it.

Then his breath had gone in, and held, and his lips had tried the shape, and Frederick had waited, and his father had said, with enormous satisfaction:

“Latin.”

Bridget, at the sink, had explained. His father had failed Latin in 1962, at fifteen, at school in England, with a mark so low that the school had written to his father, who was King, to ask whether the boy was well. And his father had told Bridget so, in the autumn, in one word at a time over a week, while she peeled potatoes; and Bridget had told Frederick on Tuesday, at the sink, with her back to him, that his father had been waiting sixty-eight years for somebody in the family to fail something, and had very nearly given up hope.

“He’s pleased,” said Bridget.

“I can see he’s pleased.”

“I’ve not seen him so pleased since the coronation.”

His father had put his good hand on the paper, flat, the way he put it on a thing that had come, and left it there through all of the arrivals, from the Capitol at six fifty-eight to the night train from Savannah, and when Frederick reached the end of the page his father had still been smiling.

---

That had been Tuesday.

On Wednesday at lunch he sat at the table in the corner by the radiator that did not work, where they always sat, and ate the potatoes, which were the potatoes, and did not mention it, and Theo mentioned it.

“Fifty-four,” said Theo.

“Thank you.”

“Fifty-four.” Theo said it with the reverence of a man reading an inscription on a tomb. “The King of fourteen realms. Fifty-four in chemistry. Four over the line.” He put down his fork. “I got sixty-one.”

“I know you got sixty-one. You told me. You told me on the stairs. You told Mr Abernathy.”

“I wanted Mr Abernathy to know.”

“What did he say?”

“He said congratulations, Hartigan, you are seven better than the King.” Theo picked the fork up again. “In the homeroom voice. I’m going to have it put on my headstone.”

Priya, opposite, was eating an apple with the steady attention of somebody reading a book. She had got eighty-eight. She had not told anybody, and everybody knew, because Mrs Okonedo had said Priya at the top of her voice and then the number, and then had said again in a tone that meant it was not a criticism.

Inés, at the end, was doing the crossword in yesterday’s paper with a pencil, and had not said what she got, and was not going to.

Lucía had got seventy and was outraged by it, on the grounds that she had revised Le Chatelier with her grandfather on the telephone to Pomona for two hours on Sunday and her grandfather had been a motorman and knew everything there was to know about pressure.

“He said if you change the conditions the system shifts to get back to how it was,” said Lucía. “He said that’s every passenger on every train he ever drove. He said you could put it on the exam and it’d be right.” She stabbed a potato. “I put it on the exam.”

“And?”

“Mrs Okonedo wrote charming next to it.” Lucía ate the potato. “And took two marks off.”

---

He had not meant to say it. Afterwards, for the rest of his life, Theo said that he had, and that the whole thing had been a plan, and Frederick never once managed to persuade him otherwise, because it was not true and Theo knew it was not true and enjoyed it too much to stop.

What happened was this.

Devon, who had got fifty-nine and was therefore in a state of great happiness, being five above the King, asked what the King’s father had said, because Devon asked things nobody else would. And Frederick told them. About the wheelchair and the paper on the table and Latin, and 1962, and the school writing to the King to ask whether the boy was well.

And Marcus said that his own father, when he had got forty-one in algebra in the eighth grade, had made him do algebra at the kitchen table every night for a month with the radio off and his mother watching, and that it had been the worst month of his life, and he had come out of it with seventy-three and a lifelong fear of the letter x.

And June said that at her house you were not allowed to leave the table until you had said one thing you had learned that day, and that her little brother had once said nothing and been kept there until nine.

And Lucía said that at her grandfather’s house in Pomona, in the summer, you had to be up at six to do the yard before it got hot, and that if you were not up at six her grandmother came in and opened the curtains and stood there.

And Frederick, who had been listening to all of this with his chin on his hand, and who had been at the Palace kitchen table at four o’clock every day since December with a man in a wheelchair who was delighted by failure, and who had been, in the last twelve weeks, crowned, and who had sat through four hours at Westminster under a crown and a canopy, and had come home to a building where the flag went up when he walked in and down when he walked out, said, without thinking about it at all:

“I’d give anything for a kitchen table like that.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“I mean an ordinary one,” said Frederick. “Where things are just. The rules are just the rules. Nobody stands up. You do the jobs and eat what’s there and go to bed.” He moved a potato with his fork. “Like Theo’s. Theo’s is the easiest place in the Realm.”

---

Theo put his fork down.

He did it slowly. He put it down on the edge of his plate, carefully, square, the way Mrs Okonedo put down a pipette, and then he looked across the table at Frederick with an expression that Frederick had seen on him three or four times in four years, and never yet without something following it.

“Say that again,” said Theo.

“What?”

“The last bit. Say it again. I want Priya to hear it.”

Priya looked up from her apple.

“I heard it,” said Priya.

“I want you to hear it twice. I want it entered in the record.” Theo turned back to Frederick. “The easiest place in the Realm.”

“I only meant…”

“I know what you meant. You meant it.” Theo leaned forward on his elbows. “How many suppers have you had at ours?”

Frederick thought.

“Forty-seven.”

“Forty-seven. I’ve got them written down. I count them. Mum doesn’t know I count them.” Theo held up one finger. “Suppers. Forty-seven suppers. You come at six. You eat what’s on it. You clear your plate. You dry. You do the crossword with Dad if he’s still up, which he isn’t, because he’s in bed by nine. And at a quarter past nine Castellanos rings the bell, which is broken, so he texts, and you put your shoes on and go down four flights and get in a car and go home to a palace.” He held up a second finger. “How many breakfasts?”

Frederick did not say anything.

“How many breakfasts, Freddie?”

“None.”

“None. How many times have you been in our bathroom at five past seven on a Saturday when Kate’s in it?”

“None.”

“How many nights have you slept at ours?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“I know you haven’t.” Theo sat back. “You’ve had forty-seven suppers. You’ve never had a morning. You’ve never had Dad’s alarm at five to five through the wall. You’ve never had the radiator that bangs at two. You’ve never had the lift with a notice on it and the bins to take down. You’ve never had Mum hand you a list and an envelope and say Dorsey’s, and don’t come back with the wrong Quark.” He picked up his fork again. “The easiest place in the Realm.”

“I could do it.”

He heard himself say it. He did not mean to say that either.

---

It went very quiet at the table in the corner by the radiator.

Devon stopped eating. Marcus stopped humming, which he had been doing, under his breath, the second verse of the school song. Inés, at the end, put her pencil down on the crossword without looking up from it. Lucía looked from Frederick to Theo and back again with the face of somebody watching a man step out onto ice.

Theo put a forkful of potato in his mouth. He chewed it. He swallowed it. He looked at Frederick across the table with his eyes bright and his ears gone slightly red, which was what happened to Theo’s ears when he was about to enjoy himself enormously.

“You wouldn’t last a weekend,” said Theo.

Five words. Afterwards Frederick counted them. He had been counting words in sentences since June; it was a habit he had picked up, the way you pick up a limp.

“I would.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Friday to Monday,” said Frederick. “I’d last.”

“House rules?”

“House rules.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Theo looked at him for a long moment more. Then he turned round in his chair, all the way round, and looked across the cafeteria at the far wall, by the doors, where the long table was that the teachers sometimes used, and where, today, nobody was sitting at all except, at the very end, with his back to the wall and a cup of something and a newspaper folded small, a man in a grey suit.

Castellanos had been eating lunch in the cafeteria on Wednesdays since January. He said it was because the custodian’s room had a new kettle that he did not trust. Nobody believed him.

Theo turned back.

“Priya,” he said. “Have you got a pen?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got paper?”

Priya looked at the table. There was nothing on it but plates, and the radiator, and yesterday’s crossword, which was Inés’s. Inés, without a word, slid the paper napkin from under her own glass across the table to Theo, unused, folded once, white, with the name of the catering company printed in green in the corner.

Theo looked at it.

“Thank you,” he said, with dignity, and took the pen from Priya, and smoothed the napkin flat on the table between the plates, and bent over it, and began to write, in capitals.