The List

It came in the Realm’s box on the Thursday after Christmas, by itself, in a buff folder, with sign on the corner in pencil and nothing else.

Recommendations for the Award of Decorations for Gallantry in Connection with the Earthquakes of 2 November 2028, 31 May 2029 and 1 June 2029. Submitted on the Advice of the Prime Minister.

Eleven pages. Sixty-three names.

He read them aloud.

The way he read commissions: each name once, to the empty room, before he signed, because a decoration was a person and the person ought to have been said by the King at least once. He sat at the desk in the north wing with the lamp on and the window dark over the Axis and the snow still on the sill outside, and read.

---

The George Cross.

Sergeant Thomas Brannigan, Royal Protection Service. For conspicuous gallantry on 31 May 2029 at Santa Monica, in the Commonwealth of California, in that he descended the bluff stairs against the crowd and crossed the beach with the sea withdrawing, took from a teacher an elderly man the teacher was carrying, returned for the teacher, and held him against the stair rail while the sea rose to the teacher’s mouth.

One name under it. He read it twice. Sergeant Thomas Brannigan.

The George Medal.

Mr Daniel Ferrante, teacher of history, Ellicott High School, New Westminster.

Mr Dale Kessler, operator of the Ferris wheel, Santa Monica Pier.

He stopped.

Dale Kessler. A tall man with a grey ponytail and a ring of keys, who locked the box before he ran. Fourteen months of name unknown, on a carton in Mr Abernathy’s capitals and in his own half-page on the Crown’s paper, and now a name. The committee had found him. He read the citation under it. Who brought the wheel down by hand with the sea withdrawing, car by car, until the last car was at the platform, and then locked the control box, and then ran.

Mr Kai Nakoa and Mr Daniel Ortega, of Santa Monica. Who, having reached the top of the bluff, returned down the stairs for an elderly man.

Ms Grace Tamura, registered nurse, of Culver City. Who carried up ninety-eight steps a child she did not know.

Mr Martin Abernathy, teacher, Ellicott High School, New Westminster.

He looked at it.

Martin. He had not known. Four years and a summer and he had not known Mr Abernathy’s first name, and here it was in a list in the King’s box on the Prime Minister’s advice. For his conduct at the foot of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier on 31 May 2029, in that, being injured, and with the sea withdrawing, he declined to leave until every pupil in his charge was accounted for. And beside it, in the margin, in the same small pencil hand that had written read twice on the corner of clause fourteen: The recipient has asked three times not to be included. The committee has declined three times to remove him.

He read on.

Staff Sergeant Maria Duarte, Fourteenth Engineers. The crew of a Coast Service helicopter, four names, the third of them Petty Officer Raymond Iwu, and he said Ray aloud by mistake, and then the whole name. Bree Callahan, lifeguard, who helped carry an old man out of a gym. Esperanza Ruelas’s son and his daughter Rosa, who dug. A boy of fourteen with a crowbar called Javier. A woman from the kitchens at Government House, in a white apron: Mrs Ana Quiroga, who served. Twenty-two names from the Governor’s lists on the coast that he did not know and read as carefully as the ones he did.

The King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct.

Señora Carmen Ruiz, teacher of Spanish, Ellicott High School, New Westminster. Who kept the record.

Miss Hannah Park, aged twelve, of Twenty-Second Street, Santa Monica. Who gave water.

He stopped again, and sat with that one.

Who gave water. And under it, in the margin, the pencil: Citation drawn from the King’s own list. The committee could find no better words.

---

He went through it twice more, slowly, from the top, every page.

He was looking for one name, and he knew it would not be there, because he had promised on a lawn under the galaxy that it would not be, and because nobody had seen it to write it, and because a man does not write his own citation and a King does not write his friend’s.

It was not there.

Hartigan was nowhere in the eleven pages. Not under the Cross, not under the Medal, not under the Commendation. Not in the margin. Not anywhere.

He sat with the pen in his hand.

He could add a name. He knew he could not; it was on advice; it was the Prime Minister’s list. But he knew too that if he wrote in the margin, in his own hand, the King asks the committee to consider, the committee would consider, and the Prime Minister would advise, and in March there would be one more name, and it would be Theo’s, and the most frightened person in the Realm would be a boy in a scarlet coat who had held a stranger’s arm for thirty-eight minutes and asked for only one thing that was his.

Don’t put a crown on it.

He signed at the bottom of the last page.

George R.

He put the folder back in the box, and locked it, and sat for a while with his hand flat on the lid.

---

The list was in the morning paper on New Year’s Day, across two pages, with the citations.

He read it at breakfast. His father read it at the end of the table, slowly, with his finger, and stopped at the same places Frederick had stopped, and at Dale Kessler his finger stayed, and he said wheel, and at Martin Abernathy he made a small sound, and at who gave water his finger stopped and stayed.

Bridget, at the sink, had her own copy, folded open, propped against the window.

At ten the north wing door.

---

He heard it from the kitchen: a knock, very heavy and very careful, as though whoever was knocking was afraid of breaking the door. And then Niamh’s voice in the corridor, surprised, and a man’s voice, very deep, and then Niamh in the kitchen doorway with an expression he had not seen on her before.

“Sir. Sergeant Brannigan.”

He was off duty. He was in a coat that did not fit across the shoulders and a scarf that somebody had knitted for him, and he filled the kitchen doorway the way he had filled the doorway of the gym at Franklin, top and sides, and he had a copy of the morning paper rolled up in one enormous hand, and he did not come in.

“Sir,” said Brannigan. “I’m sorry. It’s New Year’s. I’m not on.” He looked at the paper in his hand. “I didn’t know who else to ask.”

“Come in.”

“No, sir. I’m fine here.” He held up the paper. “It says I’m to have the George Cross.”

“Yes.”

“There’s two of them alive, sir. In the Realm. Two. I looked.” His face was very red. “And they’re old men. One was in the war.” He swallowed. “And I want to know what you do with your hands.”

Frederick looked at him.

“When they give it you,” said Brannigan. “In March. At the Palace. Sergeant Castellanos says you stand, and they read it out, and you go up, and you don’t know what to do with your hands, and nobody tells you.” He looked at the floor. “I carried a man up a staircase, sir. I know what to do with my hands for that. I don’t know what to do with them for this.”

At the end of the table, his father had turned the chair, slowly, with his hands on the wheels, to face the door.

He looked at Brannigan.

Then he lifted his own hands, slowly, off the rug, and put them together in front of him, the right hand over the left, lightly, at his waist, the way you would hold a hat if you had one.

“Like. This,” said his father.

Brannigan looked at the Duke of Cumberland. Then he looked at his own hands, one of them holding the rolled newspaper. He put the newspaper under his arm. He put his hands together in front of him, the right over the left, lightly, at his waist.

“Good,” said his father. “Then. Stand.” A breath. “Still.”

“Yes, sir,” said Brannigan.

“Fifty. Six. Years.” A longer breath. “Nobody. Knows.” His mouth moved at one corner. “Everybody. Does. That.”

Brannigan stood in the kitchen doorway with his hands folded at his waist like a man in church, enormous, red, in a scarf somebody had knitted for him, and for the first time since the beach Frederick saw his face do the thing it had done when he looked at the tree where the old man was sitting with his one shoe.

“Thank you, sir,” said Brannigan, to the Duke.

“Thank. You,” said his father, to Brannigan.

At the sink Bridget had turned round, which she never did, and was looking at the very large man in her kitchen doorway with an expression that Frederick thought, later, might have been the one she used for people who were too thin.

“Sit down, Sergeant,” said Bridget. “There’s tea.”

Brannigan sat down.

---

School began again on Tuesday the eighth.

Mr Abernathy came in at a quarter past eight in the brown jacket and sat down at the desk and opened the roll book and took out his pen. He did not look at anybody. The room had been silent since ten past, which had never happened, and was silent now.

Not a word about the list. Nor the paper, or the citation, or the three letters, or the medal he would be given in March in a room at Columbia Palace whether he came or not. Nor his first name, which every person in the room had read on New Year’s Day and nobody had known.

He looked at the room over his glasses for perhaps a second.

“Abrams.”

“Here.”

The roll. The same speed, the same small pause after every name, for everybody. Bello. Castañeda. Diaz.

“Hanover.”

“Here.”

“Hartigan.”

“Here.”

At the end he closed the book.

From the back of the room, from the desk by the window three from the back, where nobody ever spoke in homeroom except to say here, Theo said, quite clearly:

“Congratulations, sir.”

The room held its breath.

Mr Abernathy put his pen away in the inside pocket of the brown jacket. He looked out of the long windows at the playing field, which was white, with nobody on it.

“I’d prefer not, Mr Hartigan,” he said.

He looked back at the room.

“Radiators are fixed. Don’t touch them. The end.”

---

“You’re not on it,” said Frederick, on the stairs.

“I know,” said Theo. “I read it four times. On New Year’s. Kate read it five.” He went up two steps. “Kate said she was looking for Hartigan so she could be angry if it was there and angry if it wasn’t, and she wasn’t sure which yet.” He stopped on the landing. “It wasn’t.”

“No.”

Theo looked at him, on the landing, with the bell going and people pushing past.

“You could have,” said Theo. “Couldn’t you. Put it in. In the margin. They’d have done it.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t.”

“I promised. Properly.”

Theo looked out of the landing window at the white field. Then he turned and went on up the stairs to chemistry, and at the top he stopped and looked back down.

“Thank you,” said Theo, and went in, before Frederick could answer.