February

It snowed from eleven on Sunday night until four on Monday afternoon and did not stop once.

He woke at six, as he always did, and the light was wrong: white and flat and coming from below, off the snow, so that the crack in the corner of the ceiling had a shadow under it he had never seen. He got up and went to the window.

The Axis had gone.

Not gone. Under it. A mile of white going away from him between two lines of trees that were white too, every branch, to the far end, where Parliament House stood on Charter Hill with its tower lost in falling snow. The lamps still on, orange, each in its own small globe of snow going past. No cars. No tourists at the railings. No railings: a long low white ridge where they had been. The Monument halfway down was a grey shape in the snow and then not even that.

Nothing moved on the whole length of the Axis except the snow.

---

At seven the radio on the dresser said that every school in the Columbia District was shut, and that the buses were not in service, and that the interurban was running to Alexandria and nowhere else, and that the Prime Minister had walked to Parliament House from his flat at six because, the radio said, he had been asked whether he would and had said it’s only a mile.

At the end of the table, his father laughed. The short rusty one.

“Walked,” said his father.

“He always walks.”

“Snow.” A breath. “Two. Feet.”

“He said it’s only a mile.”

His father looked out of the kitchen window at the garden, which was a smooth white field with the shapes of benches under it, and the wall at the end gone up to its coping.

“Good. Man,” said his father.

---

The telephone on the kitchen wall at half past seven. Bridget held it out. Wisconsin, pet.

“The depot’s shut,” said Theo. “Dad’s been down. The buses are under it. All of them. Mr Lasko’s in the office with the heater on and he says he’s not going home because somebody might leave something.” A pause. “Kate’s stuck at the college. Bethany’s got Professor in her coat. They’ve built a snowman on the river path and Kate’s sending me pictures every ten minutes.” A longer pause. “I can’t get to you. I tried. I got to the end of the street.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing?”

He looked at the kitchen. His father at the end of the table. Bridget, who had walked in at six from wherever she lived through two feet of snow and had not said how. The radio. The window.

“Nothing,” said Frederick. “It’s a snow day.”

Theo was quiet on the line.

“You’ve never had one,” said Theo. “Have you. Not as King.”

“No.”

“Well,” said Theo. “You’re not missing anything. You just sit in the kitchen and somebody makes you cocoa.” Another pause. “Tell your dad the depot’s shut. He’ll want to know the buses aren’t running. He’s like that.”

---

At three, with the light already going, he was at the window of the morning room with his father, who had asked to be there.

From the morning room you could see the roof of the east front if you stood at the right-hand side of the window and leaned. He leaned. The flagstaff was on the roof against a sky the colour of dirty milk, in the floodlight, which had come on early.

The Standard was on it.

It was not flying. It was hanging, frozen. The snow had got into it and the cold had set it, and it hung down the staff stiff as a board, red and gold and blue, crusted white along every fold, moving not at all in the wind that was moving everything else.

“Flag,” said his father, from the chair.

“It’s frozen.”

“Halyard.” A breath. “Too.”

As they watched, a door opened in the parapet by the flagstaff. A man came out onto the roof. He was in a dark coat with the collar up and a hat and he had a rope round his waist tied off to something inside the door, and he went along the leads to the foot of the staff very slowly, in the snow, leaning into the wind, and put his gloved hands on the halyard where it was cleated, and pulled.

Nothing moved.

He pulled again. Frederick saw the snow come off the halyard in a little puff, and the Standard jerk, once, at the top of the staff, and stay where it was.

“Who is that?”

His father leaned forward in the chair to see.

“Mews,” said his father. “Coachman.” The breath. “Always.”

“Why a coachman?”

His father thought about it.

“Heights,” said his father. “Not. Afraid.”

The man on the roof stood at the foot of the staff in the snow and the wind and the floodlight. He did not try to bring it down. He was not going to, Frederick saw; that the rule was the rule, and the Standard flew when the King was in the building, frozen or not. He took something from his coat. A cloth. He reached up as high as he could and wiped the snow off the lowest fold of the Standard, carefully, like a man clearing a windscreen with his sleeve, so that the gold of it showed, a little, in the floodlight.

Then he stood back from it and looked at it.

Then he went back along the leads to the door in the parapet, slowly, with the rope paying out behind him, and went in, and shut the door.

On the roof, in the floodlight, in the snow, frozen to its staff, with one fold wiped clean so that the gold showed: the Standard. Because he was in the building.

“There,” said his father, and sat back.

---

At nine he made the coffee.

He could not take it outside. The north wing door would not open; the snow had drifted against it to the height of the handle, and Dame M had said at six that nobody was to try, because the door was from 1795 and she did not intend to explain to the Household’s surveyors why it had come off its hinges in a snow day. So he carried the two white cups down the stone corridor and Castellanos was not on the chair, because the chair was by the door and the door was a wall of white behind its glass panel. He was standing in the corridor ten feet back from it, in his grey suit, with his hands behind his back, looking at the snow in the glass.

“Sit down,” said Frederick.

There was nothing to sit on. They looked at each other.

Frederick sat on the stone floor of the corridor with his back against the wall, under the lamp, with his cup. After a moment Castellanos sat on the floor too, against the opposite wall, with his legs out, in his grey suit, which Frederick had never seen him do in twelve years and a Ferris wheel.

They drank.

“Good,” said Castellanos.

The snow in the glass of the door. The lamp. The radiator ticking somewhere down the corridor. Very quiet; the whole capital quiet, under two feet of snow, no cars, no buses, no trains but to Alexandria.

“Sir,” said Castellanos.

Frederick looked at him.

“I’ve been offered something.” Castellanos looked at his cup. “Inspector. In the Service. A desk. Training, mostly. New officers.” He turned the cup. “It came in January. I was to answer by the end of February.”

The snow in the glass.

He thought about a landing on the fourth floor of a block of brown brick, and a window over a bus depot, and a man with a torch, and himself with his hands in his pockets, not listening at a door, because it was not his question.

“It’s yours,” said Frederick. “The question. Not mine.”

“I know, sir.”

“I’m not going to ask it.”

“I know you’re not, sir.” Castellanos’s eyes creased. “That’s why I’m telling you. I’ve answered it.”

Frederick waited.

“I said yes,” said Castellanos. “From June next year. When you finish at Ellicott. The last day.” He drank some of the coffee. “Not before. I told them not before. They said they’d wait.” He looked at the snow in the glass. “They’ve waited twelve years for me to say yes to something. They said another sixteen months wouldn’t hurt.”

Frederick looked at him across the stone corridor.

June next year. The last day of senior year. Sixteen months.

He had known it would come. He had not known when. He had known that nobody stays at the edge of the room for ever, that Castellanos had been at the edge of every room since Frederick was four, and that one day there would be a room without him at the edge of it. He had not thought about the day. He thought about it now, on the floor of the corridor with a cup of coffee going cold in his hands.

“Why June?”

Castellanos considered the question.

“Because I said I’d drive you to school, sir,” he said. “In October, the year before last. When the Household had its argument about the car. I said I’d drive you myself because I didn’t trust anybody else at the lights on the Axis.” He looked at the cup. “I didn’t say for how long. I’ve decided it’s until you’ve finished.”

“And after?”

“After, you’ll be eighteen, and you’ll go wherever you go, and somebody else will be at the edge of the room.” Castellanos looked at him. “Somebody good. I’ll train them. That’s the job. That’s why I said yes.” He paused. “And on Mondays, sir, if you’ll have me, I’ll come and have coffee.”

Frederick could not answer for a moment.

“On the step,” he said.

“On the step, sir. Unless it’s snowed.”

They sat on the floor of the stone corridor of the north wing, a yard of floor between them, with their backs against the walls, and drank the coffee, and outside in the glass of the north wing door the snow went on going past in the light of the lamp, and somewhere above them on the roof, frozen to its staff, with one fold wiped clean, the Standard said that the King was in the building, to an Axis with nobody on it to read it.

At a quarter past nine Castellanos stood up. He did not put his cup down on the step, because there was no step. He put it on the floor, beside Frederick’s, square, the two of them side by side, on the stone.

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Sergeant.”

He went down the corridor towards the kitchen and the night officer, who was not coming, because nobody was coming anywhere, and who was in fact Castellanos, for tonight, because he had walked in at five through two feet of snow from wherever he lived and had not said how.