Homework

Columbia Palace, New Westminster Tuesday 13 March, half past ten

Dear Alexander,

Your letter came yesterday. Dame M brought it up after the hospital, on the tray, by itself, and stood in the doorway for a moment longer than she usually does, as though the envelope were heavier than the others and she had noticed. I read it at the desk. I read the first page three times and the rest once, which is not my method, and I know it isn’t.

You said the first thing you decide should be the first thing you’re allowed to decide. I think that’s right. I think it’s the best reason anybody has given me for anything this year, and I’ve been given a great many reasons this year, most of them by people in good suits.

I want to say that first, before the rest, so that it’s on the record before the rest is.

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The rest is the kitchen table. It was tonight.

There wasn’t much. There is never much in March, Mamma says, because March is when everybody is waiting for April. Two appointments in New Wessex. A proclamation for a day of thanksgiving in the West Indies that has been held on the same day for sixty years and has to be proclaimed again every year anyway, because nobody ever thought to make it permanent, and Mamma said that if she ever has a free afternoon she is going to find out whose job that is and give it to them for ever. A letter from the British government about the coronation, which isn’t a date, which is a letter saying there will be a date. I’m allowed an opinion about all of it now, because it’s long past the second Tuesday, and my opinion about all of it was yes.

Then, at the end, when she was putting it back in the folder, I asked her something. I said it was for civics.

We are doing federations in civics, which is true. We did the Realm in January and we’re doing the German Empire now, because the teacher says it’s the federation people in this country understand least and argue about most, and because of you, though she doesn’t say that. So I said, “For civics. Can the King of Hanover have a view on how Hanover instructs its delegates in the Bundesrat?”

I said it in English. We do the table in English, mostly, because the papers are in English.

She stopped putting things in the folder.

She looked at me over her glasses for a long time, the way she did on the night I asked to see everything, and I knew while she was looking that it had not sounded like civics, and that she knew it hadn’t, and that she was deciding whether to say so.

Then she answered in Swedish. She said:

“Det får han. Men det är inte hans fråga, och nu har han ställt den.”

And put the folder under her arm, and said goodnight in English, and went up.

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I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to work out what she meant. My Swedish is worse than my English, which you know, and she knows, and I think she chose it on purpose, because in Swedish I can’t make anything sound cleverer than it is, and neither can she.

Word for word it’s: He may. But it isn’t his question, and now he has asked it.

She said he. Not you. Because I’d asked about the King of Hanover, as though he were somebody in a textbook, so she answered about him, as though he were somebody in a textbook. I think that was a joke. I think it was also not a joke.

I can read it three ways, and I’ve written all three in the green book, which now has a page that is mostly crossings-out.

One: yes, the King of Hanover may have a view. It just isn’t his question to decide, because it’s Hanover’s ministers’ question, and they decide it, and she does what they advise and nothing else, and that’s the end of it. Which I knew. It’s in Hanover’s Act, the one from October. I’ve read it. I’ve marked it in blue.

Two: I shouldn’t have asked. It isn’t my question, and I’ve asked it anyway, and now it’s been asked, and you can’t unask a thing. Which is a telling-off, in Swedish, which is how she tells me off when she doesn’t want Dame M to hear.

Three: now that I’ve asked it, she knows what my view is, because nobody asks whether he may have a view unless he’s got one. And she’s Hanover’s Regent. And she sees Hanover’s ministers. And she can’t tell them what I think, and won’t. But she knows. And I don’t know whether knowing is the same as telling. I don’t think it is. I don’t know.

I’m not sure what she meant. That’s the honest answer. I’m writing it down because you told me to write down what I actually think, and what I actually think is that I don’t know what my mother meant, and that I asked the question so that she would know what I wanted, and that I’m not sure that’s allowed.

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You’ll be angry. I know you will. I read your first page yesterday and I knew what it said, and I went down to the kitchen tonight and asked anyway, and I told myself on the stairs that it was civics.

It wasn’t civics. I’m not going to pretend to you that it was. I wanted to help. You’ve had thirteen months of people deciding things in your name and for once there’s a thing being decided that you might want, by people who don’t care what you want, and two of the states that vote on it are mine, and I thought, I can’t do anything, I’m not allowed to do anything, but I can ask a question at a kitchen table, and that’s not doing anything, that’s asking.

I didn’t ask about Brunswick. I don’t know why. I think because if I’d asked twice it would have been a question, and not homework. I noticed that on the stairs as well.

It’s in the green book, with the date, the way you said. I’ve written it as plainly as I could:

13 March. Asked Mamma, for civics, whether the King of Hanover may have a view on the Bundesrat. She answered in Swedish. I don’t know what she meant. F.

I haven’t written whether I was right to ask. I don’t know that either.

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Other things.

The eight is back on the river. Last Thursday was the first morning, and the river was high and brown and very cold, and the cox said we rowed like eight people who had spent the winter facing a wall, which we had. My hands have come back up in blisters in exactly the places they were in November, which the coach says is the body remembering, and which Theo says is the body complaining.

I read Papa the trains at four. I told him about Kamerun. I know you said you didn’t want anybody else to know. Papa isn’t anybody else. He’s the drawers. Not the vote; I didn’t tell him about the vote. The drawer. I told him that you’d opened the third one on purpose, so that Jaunde would be asked, and he looked at me for a long time, the way he does, going to the back of the room for the word, and when he came back with it, it was “Good.” He said it twice. He hasn’t said anything twice since November. I wanted you to have that before anything else in this letter, and I’ve put it near the end, because I didn’t want it to be the thing you used to stop being angry.

I wrote to Charlotte for her birthday. About the novel. Only about the novel, as I promised you in November. I said that the ending is wrong and that I’ll prove it at Easter. She hasn’t written back yet. She’s revising.

You said your present for her was a present for you. I don’t know what it is. I bet it’s a map of something.

Mamma says yes to Easter, properly, in English this time, which means it’s real. So I’ll see Andromeda in the trees. You told me so I wouldn’t be disappointed. I won’t be. I’ve only ever seen it once, and that was from a jetty in the snow, and the right way up. I’d like to see it the wrong way up as well. Then I’ll know both.

Theo says he has stopped doing the back of the head on old ladies, out of respect, and that he has moved on to the drivers of other buses, who don’t turn round, because they can’t.

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It’s late. Dame M has been past the door once, which on a Tuesday counts as three times, because Tuesday is the night she knows I’ve been at the table.

I’ll send this in the morning. It’ll get to you on Wednesday, in a day, the way it always does. I thought about not sending it. I thought about writing a different one about the river and Kamerun and Charlotte’s birthday and leaving out the kitchen table. Then I thought that you’d find out anyway, because you always find out, and that it would be worse if you found out from somebody who wasn’t me.

So here it is. It was homework. It wasn’t homework. I don’t know what she meant.

Yours, with every formality, and not sure,

Frederick