The Flagstaff

Lunch was Semmerl and the coarse liver sausage and the horseradish, which Mrs Hartigan grated at the counter on the small side of a box grater into a saucer while the rest of them sat at the table with their eyes watering from six feet away.

“Don’t touch your eyes,” said Mrs Hartigan.

“Margit said that.”

“Margit says that to everybody. Everybody touches their eyes.” She put the saucer on the table between the sugar hen and the bread board. It was white and wet and smelled like the inside of a struck match. “A little. On the sausage. Not on its own. Peter eats it on its own and cries and says it’s good for him.”

“Is it?”

“No,” said Mrs Hartigan, and sat down. “Kate. The radio.”

Kate reached behind her without getting up and turned on the radio on the windowsill, a small square one with a handle, the kind that had been in every kitchen in the Realm in 1990 and was still in about half of them, and the twelve o’clock pips came out of it, six short and one long, as though they had been waiting.

---

The news at twelve, said a man’s voice from New Westminster, level, and Frederick put a little horseradish on a piece of sausage on a piece of roll, and listened to it the way he listened to the news on the dresser in the kitchen at the Palace every morning, half attending, waiting for the weather.

The Prime Minister in the Commons on Thursday. A bridge in Ohio. Snow forecast for the north on Monday, and possibly, by the end of the week, for the District. The trial of a man in Baltimore.

And at Columbia Palace, said the man from New Westminster, in the same level way, the Royal Standard has not flown since a little after four o’clock yesterday afternoon. The Household has made no statement. Under the rule of 1841 the Standard flies only when the sovereign is in the building. The Palace has one flagstaff, and what flies from it is the standard of the most senior person present. Since four o’clock yesterday, nothing has.

Then the weather.

Kate had stopped chewing.

Mrs Hartigan, at the end of the table, put a very small amount of horseradish on a very small piece of sausage, and ate it, and did not look at anybody.

“Nothing has,” said Kate. “Not even your mum’s?”

“My mother doesn’t have one. Not in the Realm. She uses her standard only in Sweden.” Frederick looked at his roll. “And my father…”

He stopped.

His father was in the building. His father was at the end of the kitchen table by the range, this minute, probably, in the wheelchair, with his good hand flat on the oilcloth, having his lunch, with Bridget. His father had been King for fifty-six years and had reigned from that house, and in fifty-six years the Standard had gone up the flagstaff every time he walked in at the door and down every time he walked out of it.

His father did not have a standard any more.

He had not thought about that until now.

“He’s a Duke,” he said. “Dukes don’t have one there. Not of their own.” He put the roll down. “So it’s empty.”

Kate looked at him across the table for a moment, with the horseradish making her eyes water, or something.

“That’s sad,” said Kate.

“Kate,” said her mother.

“It is,” said Kate. “It’s a sad flagstaff.”

---

At ten past twelve the music stopped and the station went over to its phone-in, and a voice that Frederick knew came out of the small square radio on the windowsill, warm and cheerful and much too close to the microphone.

It’s ten past twelve on a wet Saturday in the capital and this is Potomac Talk, I’m Gary Brandon, and let’s not mess about. You’ve heard the news. I’ve heard the news. The whole District’s heard the news. There is no flag on the Palace.

“Oh no,” said Frederick.

“Who’s that?” said Kate.

“Gary,” said Frederick. “From last February. When Devon sent the photograph of the board.” He put his head in his hands. “He had the Prime Minister on hold for eleven minutes. Well, the school did. He talked about it for a week.”

No flag, said Gary Brandon happily, since four o’clock yesterday. Now, I’m not a royalist, folks, you know me, I’m not anything, I’m a man with a microphone and a mortgage. But I walked down the Axis this morning to get my paper, like I do, and I looked up, like you do, and there was nothing there, and I felt, I don’t mind telling you, a little bit funny. And I want to know where he is. And I bet you do. So the lines are open. Where’s the King? Line one, it’s Harold, up by the cathedral. Harold.

Hello, Gary.

Hello, Harold. Where’s the King?

Well, Gary, I’ll tell you. I walk down the Axis every Friday evening at half past seven. I’ve done it eleven years. Every Friday since the November before last, that flag’s been up. Last night it wasn’t. I rang the music station at twenty to nine and the young man said he’d gone out for the evening, like anybody. Gary, he doesn’t go out on a Friday. He’s sixteen and he lives with his mother and his father’s in a wheelchair, God bless him. He stays in.

Mrs Hartigan made a small sound into her coffee.

So where’s he gone, Harold?

That’s what I’m asking you, Gary.

---

It went on.

Line two was a woman in the Heights who thought the King had gone to Sweden, to see his grandparents, because it was February and people went to see their grandparents in February. Line three was a man from across the eastern branch who had worked for the Parks Service on the Axis for nineteen years and who said, with great authority, that the flagstaff had been down before for maintenance, in 2022, for a week, and that nobody had said anything then, and that this was probably the halyard. Gary asked him whether the halyard usually broke at exactly the moment a car drove out of the side door. The man said he could not speak to that.

Line four was a woman who would not give her name, who said that she had a friend whose daughter worked in the Palace kitchen, and that the kitchen had sent out a basket last night, a big one, the old kind with straps, in a car, at nine o’clock.

A basket, said Gary Brandon.

A hamper. A proper one. My friend’s daughter said the cook had been packing it since four and humming.

Humming, said Gary.

Humming, said the woman.

At the table, Kate put her face in her hands.

“She’ll be sacked,” said Frederick.

“Nobody’s going to be sacked,” said Mrs Hartigan. “Bridget won’t let them. Bridget will find out who it was by teatime and she’ll have them doing potatoes for a month and they’ll wish they’d been sacked.” She ate a piece of roll. “It’s a good thing it went back.”

---

Line five, said Gary Brandon, at twenty-five past twelve, it’s Darnell, out past the depots. Darnell, you’ve told my producer you’ve got something.

Yeah, said Darnell. He sounded about fifteen. Yeah, Gary, I’ve got something.

Go on.

My little cousin, said Darnell, was in Dorsey’s this morning. On the avenue. Him and his mom. Around half ten. And he says the King was in the queue at till four.

In Dorsey’s.

In Dorsey’s, Gary. Doing his shopping.

Gary Brandon was silent for nearly two seconds, which on Potomac Talk was a very long time.

Darnell, he said, I’m going to need a bit more than your little cousin.

He took a picture, said Darnell. He put it on his thing. It’s got like four thousand on it now. I’m looking at it.

Describe it for me, Darnell.

Okay, said Darnell, and Frederick, at the kitchen table four floors over the depot, closed his eyes. So it’s him. Definitely him. In like a school coat. No hat. Wet. At till four. And he’s holding his change in his hand, like this, flat, like he’s counting it. And he’s got a bag in the other hand, a cotton one, it says something on it, I can’t read it. And under his arm… Darnell paused, for effect, with what Frederick recognised, through his closed eyes, as the instinct of a born broadcaster. Under his arm, Gary, he has got nine rolls of toilet paper.

There was a sound in the kitchen. It was Kate. She had laughed so suddenly that she had inhaled horseradish, and was now bent over the table coughing with tears running down her face, and her mother was hitting her on the back, twice, hard.

Nine rolls, said Gary Brandon, very slowly, into the microphone, with the reverence of a man who has been given a gift. Darnell. Darnell, my friend. Are you telling me that the King of fourteen realms, crowned at Westminster Abbey not twelve weeks ago, is at this moment somewhere in the north-east of the District with a nine-pack of toilet paper?

I’m telling you it’s on my cousin’s thing, Gary.

Then the Standard’s not down, said Gary Brandon, with deep and growing joy, because he’s ill. It’s not down because he’s in Sweden. It’s down because he’s gone to stay with somebody, folks. Somebody ordinary. Somebody who sends him to Dorsey’s on a Saturday morning with a list. A pause. And I want to know who.

---

The telephone on the wall rang at one o’clock exactly.

Frederick got up and got it before anybody else could.

“Sir,” said Dame M.

“I heard.”

“I assumed you had. It is on every station now. The photograph is on a great many telephones.” Her voice did not change at all. “There will be a statement from the Household at two o’clock. I wish you to know what it says before it is said.”

“What does it say?”

“It says that the King is spending the weekend privately with friends in the Columbia District and is well, and that the Household has nothing further to say.” A pause. “It does not say where. It does not say who. It will not say where or who if it is asked, and it will be asked, and I have already declined, at half past twelve, on your behalf, an offer from a newspaper to tell me where in exchange for not printing it.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, sir. Mrs Hartigan has already thanked me.” A very small pause. “She rang at a quarter past twelve, during line four. She asked me to make sure that nobody said the word Hartigan on the air, and I said that nobody would, and she said good, and then she asked me whether Bridget was going to be all right about the basket being mentioned, and I said that Bridget would be very cross and very pleased, in that order, and she said good again, and rang off.” Dame M let that sit. “I have known Mrs Hartigan for four years, sir, and I believe that is the longest conversation she has ever had with me voluntarily.”

He looked across the room at Mrs Hartigan, at the end of the table, who was spreading coarse liver sausage on a roll and looking at nothing.

“And the Standard?” he said.

“Is a question I shall answer by tomorrow morning,” said Dame M. “I am waiting for the Lord Chamberlain to wake up in London and have a view, so that I can disregard it.” She paused. “I shall ring at two.”

“You don’t have to ring at two.”

“I know, sir,” said Dame M, and rang off.

---

His telephone was on top of the fridge, beside the biscuit tin, where Mrs Hartigan had put it at ten.

It had buzzed four times during Gary Brandon. He had heard it each time, against the biscuit tin, and had not looked at it, and Mrs Hartigan had looked at it, and at him, and had not said anything either.

At ten past one he asked whether he might look at it.

“It’s your telephone,” said Mrs Hartigan. “The shopping’s done.”

He took it down. Four messages.

One from Theo, at the first-aid post at the community stadium on Canal Street, sent at twelve thirty-one: ARE YOU ON THE RADIO??? WITH LOO ROLL???? Mrs Brennan from St John just showed me on her phone. I have to sit down. I am a medical professional and I have to sit down.

One from his mother, at twelve forty: Nine?

One from Castellanos, at twelve fifty-two, from the car at the corner, where he had relieved Kimura at noon: Photograph confirmed. Dorsey’s. Good posture under the circumstances. Kimura says the cashier gets a nine. I’d give her a ten. Nobody has come up the street yet. They will.

And one from a number he did not know, at one minute past one, which said only:

It’s Inés. Lucía gave me the number. I take it back. You might last.

He looked at the last one for a long time.

Then, from the landing outside, came a knock at the door.

It was not two polite knocks. It was not three measured ones. It was a great many small, rapid, uneven ones, at about the height of a doorknob, as though somebody very short were knocking with both fists at once, and behind them, lower down, at about the height of a knee, a second set, slightly out of time with the first.

And behind both of them, a woman’s voice, on the landing, saying, in a hiss of absolute despair:

“Stavros. Eleni. I said we would ask Mrs Hartigan first.”